Friday of the Seventh Week in Course 2025
Jeshua ben Sira was an Alexandrian Jew who spoke both Hebrew and Greek. About two hundred years before Jesus Christ his family gave us a compilation of his writings, which we call the Book of Sirach. It was used so often in the early Church that it acquired the name Ecclesiasticus, or “the Church book.” Although it was originally in Hebrew, the only surviving version of the whole book is in Greek. Much of the book is a series of sayings, very like the Hebrew book of Proverbs.
When we read “Let those that are at peace with you be many, but let your advisers be one in a thousand,” we understand that, as the book of Proverbs says, “Listen to counsel and accept discipline, That you may be wise the rest of your days.” (Prov 19:20) In most of today’s reading, we see the value of friendship but also find warnings about it. Discernment of friends is critical, because some are for fair weather only, and can turn on us and become enemies when life gets difficult for either one. Tested friends are the most valuable ones, sturdy shelters against future adversity. The most important characteristic of two faithful friends, we learn, is that they have values and virtues that are well aligned and directed toward filial fear of the Lord.
As the psalmist sings, such faithful friends delight in the statutes of the Lord, especially the twin commandments to love God above all, and love neighbor as ourselves.
St. Mark’s Gospel records an important event in the ministry of Jesus. He rises up and goes to Judea, so He moves south to the area around Jerusalem, where He has already predicted He will be arrested and murdered by His own people. Jesus continues to teach, and His crowds are getting bigger. But He’s getting closer to the center of the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ political center. Both parties fear and hate Him, because the people are looking on Him as a Messiah who will rally an army and battle the Romans. That’s happened even though Jesus has given nobody cause to believe that. They’ve just been looking for such a Messiah for generations, and project their own hopes onto every leader they encounter.
The Pharisees will be throwing theologically difficult questions at Jesus from now until His passion week. Today they ask Him if it is in accord with Torah for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus responds as a good rabbi would: what did Moses command in Torah? They answered that Moses required a written bill of divorce before a man could send his wife away. Jesus saw that this answer ignored the root of the problem. His diagnosis of the real moral disease sounds awesome in Greek: Moses did that because of your sklerokardia. That’s “hard hearts.” In a sense, Jesus is saying, “you guys want the right to kick your helper of twenty or thirty years to the curb, and some of you would justify that just for an overcooked meal. Now let’s look at what Moses really wrote.” “from the beginning of creation, `God made them male and female.' `For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
Doesn’t that sound like a trope on our readings from Sirach or even Proverbs about friendship? Nothing so precious as a faithful friend, and even more precious as a faithful spouse. That’s truly the elixir of life, a person to dedicate the rest of your life to love and serve.
