26 February 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1
After the flood God speaks to Noah and binds himself by a promise, not only to Noah's family but “with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you.” He gives a sign: “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” The Hebrew word for the rainbow is the same as for a warrior's bow; God hangs up his weapon in the sky. And the sign is for God himself: “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God binds himself to remember. The second reading tells how the walls of Jericho fell, not by siege engines but by obedience. Seven priests with seven trumpets walk before the ark, around the city, once a day for six days, and the people are told: “You shall not shout or let your voice be heard, nor shall you utter a word, until the day I tell you to shout.” On the seventh day they go round seven times; the trumpets sound, the people shout, “and the wall fell down flat.” Rahab and her family are spared “because she hid the messengers”. These pages of conquest are hard to read, and the Church reads them in the light of Christ, not as a pattern for treating people but as a picture of the walls of sin that fall before patient, silent obedience. During these weeks pilgrims climb Malayattoor hill, where tradition says St Thomas prayed, many carrying wooden crosses, step after step, calling on the golden cross. Like the circling of Jericho, Lenten prayer is often slow and repeated, and its fruit comes on a day we do not choose.
Paul opens the eighth chapter of Romans with the most freeing sentence a sinner can hear: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” What the law could not do, God did, “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” The choice before us is a matter of where we set our minds: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” In the Gospel the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, bring Jesus a riddle about a woman married in turn to seven brothers: whose wife will she be? Jesus answers: “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” The risen life is not this life repeated; it is new. And he goes back to the burning bush, where God called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, long after they had died: “He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” On this Friday we walk the Way of the Cross to the tomb, but the tomb is not the end of the road. Those we have lost are alive to God, and we pray for them in that hope.
Theme: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
The rainbow covenant, the patient obedience that brought down Jericho, freedom from condemnation, and the God of the living.
“I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” Genesis 9:13
“And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Luke 22:20
Apply: Thank God tonight for three promises he has kept in your life.
“Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Isaiah 1:18
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1
Apply: If an old sin still weighs on you after confession, hand it to Christ today and believe his pardon.
“He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” Exodus 3:6
“He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.”” Mark 12:27
Apply: Pray for your departed by name today, and visit a grave if you can.
God remembers his covenant, and in Christ there is no condemnation.
Walk patiently like Israel around Jericho, and remember that the road of the Cross leads to the God of the living.
Take-home resolution: Pray the Way of the Cross today, and end it with a prayer for your departed.
Dear friends, after the flood God set his bow in the clouds as a sign of the covenant (Genesis 9:13). God hung up his weapon in the sky and promised: I will remember. Our God is a God who remembers his promises.
The walls of Jericho fell not by force but by obedience: seven days of walking in silence around the city, and then a shout. Lenten prayer is like that. We walk the Way of the Cross, Friday after Friday, and the walls of sin fall on a day we do not choose.
Paul gives us the most freeing word a sinner can hear: there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Set your mind on the Spirit, and you will find life and peace.
Jesus tells the Sadducees that God is not God of the dead, but of the living (Mark 12:27). Our Way of the Cross ends at a tomb, but the tomb is not the end. Let us pray today for our departed, who are alive to God. Amen.
Children, after the flood God put a rainbow in the sky as a promise. God always keeps his promises! And Jesus tells us that people who die in God's love are alive with him.
Lord Jesus Christ, in you there is no condemnation. Remember your everlasting covenant with us, as you remembered Noah; bring down the walls of our sin through patient obedience; set our minds on the Spirit, who gives life and peace. You are God of the living: give eternal rest to our departed and bring us all to the resurrection. Amen.
Four readings on this Friday of the Fast, and their common thread is life that God holds on to. After the flood God binds himself by a covenant with every living creature. At Jericho a wall falls before patient obedience, and one household is spared. Paul announces that there is “no condemnation” for those in Christ, for the Spirit gives life. And Jesus tells the Sadducees that God is the God of the living, so that even death does not break his bond with those he loves. The second reading contains one of the hardest pages in the Bible, and the Church does not hide it: see the question below.
Setting.
The flood is over, and Noah has come out of the ark. God blesses him with the words of creation, “Be fruitful and multiply” (9:1), so this is a new beginning for the world. Many scholars think that this part of Genesis received its final form among priests around the time of the Babylonian exile, when Israel needed to hear that God’s promise outlasts disaster. It is the first covenant the Bible describes in full.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood,” (9:11)
The promise is made after the flood has shown that the human heart is unchanged (8:21). God’s fidelity, not our goodness, is what holds the world in being.
“When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” (9:16)
The bond reaches the animals and the earth as well as human beings, a point that the Church has come to hear with new attention in our time.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that this covenant stands for as long as the world lasts (CCC 71), and that it expresses God’s plan for the nations (CCC 56–58). Noah’s ark prefigures salvation by baptism (CCC 1094, 1219; 1 Peter 3:20–21).
Setting.
Israel has crossed the Jordan (Joshua 3–4), and Jericho, one of the oldest cities in the world, stands before them. The story is told more like a liturgy than a battle: priests, trumpets, the ark, silence, seven days. Before this, the spies have been hidden by Rahab, a woman of the city (Joshua 2).
Many archaeologists find little sign of a large walled city at Jericho in the likely time of Joshua, and many scholars think that the book took shape centuries later, with a religious purpose. These matters remain under discussion.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“You shall not shout or let your voice be heard, nor shall you utter a word, until the day I tell you to shout.” (6:10)
Six days of walking and silence with nothing to show. The people must trust without seeing any result. This is a true picture of the Fast.
“and the wall fell down flat;” (6:20)
The Letter to the Hebrews says, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30). It is faith that the Church draws from this story.
“But Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, Joshua spared.” (6:25)
An outsider, and a woman of low repute, is the one who is saved along with her household. Hebrews praises her faith (11:31), James her works (James 2:25), and Matthew puts her in the family tree of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).
How the Church reads it.
The early Church read this page spiritually. St Clement of Rome saw in Rahab’s scarlet cord (Joshua 2:18) a sign of redemption through the Lord’s blood (1 Clement 12). Origen took the fall of Jericho as a picture of the world’s strongholds falling before the trumpet of the Gospel, and he saw in Rahab’s house an image of the Church (Homilies on Joshua 3 and 7; in substance).
Setting.
Romans 7 ended with a cry: “Wretched man that I am!” (7:24). Chapter 8 is the answer. In the whole letter “Spirit” has come rarely so far; now it fills this chapter. Paul turns from the struggle of a person left to himself to the life of someone in Christ.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (8:1)
The word “now” carries the whole Gospel. For the one who is in Christ the verdict has already been changed, and this is the ground of all our effort.
“by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,” (8:3)
“Likeness” is carefully chosen. The Son truly shares our condition, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). What was condemned on the cross was sin, not the sinner.
“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (8:6)
Paul does not set out a list of rules here. He asks where the heart is turned, and tells us what comes of it.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that the New Law is “the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1965–1966), as St Thomas Aquinas taught when he said that the New Law consists chiefly in that grace (Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 106, a. 1; in substance). On “the likeness of sinful flesh”, see CCC 602.
Setting.
This is the only appearance of the Sadducees in Mark. They were a priestly and aristocratic party in Jerusalem who, according to Acts 23:8 and the historian Josephus, denied the resurrection. They appealed to the Law of Moses, and they build their case on the law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5–6), by which a man married his childless brother’s widow to carry on the family line. Their story is meant to make belief in the resurrection look absurd.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” (12:24)
The Catechism quotes this answer when it teaches on the resurrection (CCC 993). Both mistakes are still common: not to read the Word closely, and to make God as small as what we have seen.
“For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (12:25)
Jesus does not say that the love of a husband and wife is lost. He says that risen life is not arranged as this life is, with its need of heirs. Their riddle assumes too small a heaven.
“He is God not of the dead, but of the living;” (12:27)
Jesus argues from Exodus 3:6, in the books the Sadducees themselves honour. God does not say “I was” the God of Abraham. A God who has bound himself to a person does not let that bond end at the grave.
How the Church reads it.
“Faith in the resurrection rests on faith in God” who is the God of the living (CCC 993). The Catechism also sees consecrated virginity, which it links to this verse, as a sign of the world to come (CCC 1619). This is the hope with which the Church prays for her dead at every Holy Qurbana.
How can the Bible say that God ordered the destruction of a whole city?
This is a true difficulty, and the Church does not hide it. The Second Vatican Council says that the books of the Old Testament contain some things that are “incomplete and temporary” (Dei Verbum 15). Pope Benedict XVI says of such “dark” passages that revelation entered a history marked by the violence of its age, and that God’s people were led step by step toward the fullness of Christ (Verbum Domini 42). Many scholars add that the account is a later telling with a religious purpose. Whatever history lies behind it, the story is no pattern for how any people are to be treated. Jesus has shown us who God is: “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).