11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 SAMUEL 12:7-10 and 13
Nathan said to David:
“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your arms, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.
Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.”
David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”
King David has fallen in love with Bathsheba, who is married to Uriah, one of his generals. To have her, David arranges for her husband to die in battle and then takes her as his wife.
The prophet Nathan reproaches him for this attitude with the famous parable of the poor man who had but one ewe lamb, and a rich man took it to prepare a meal for his guests (perhaps the only story in the Old Testament that can be called a “parable” in the same sense as those of Jesus).
This story is set on this Sunday to remind us of one of the important facets of the great King David: his condition as a sinner, which is not concealed in Scripture. A king gravely sinful, who must constantly return to the forgiveness of God and yet is the instrument of God for the good of his people.
GALATIANS 2:16 and 19-21
We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
This is one of the most intense moments in the letter to the Galatians. Paul feels deeply that he himself is a work of God, that it is not the fulfillment of the Old Law that makes him an apostle, but the election of God.
He feels that the world despises him as criminals are despised, and he feels the same way about the criteria and values of the world. Paul feels that it is Christ himself who works through him and that his action in the communities is the saving action of Jesus himself.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.