GOSPEL, Mark (12: 35-37)

Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark

 The Question about David’s Son

³⁵ While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? ³⁶ David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
    until I put your enemies under your feet.”’

³⁷ David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?” And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.

The Gospel of the Lord

 

REFLECTION

Throughout his life, Jesus revealed to the disciples his identity as true God and true man. As a man, he comes from the lineage of King David.

Jesus demonstrated to the doctors of Law this mystery: the Messiah, although descended from David by his human origin, also possessed a divine character, which David had not. This was the solution of the Christian faith, based on the resurrection of Jesus. The Messiah could not be both son and Lord of David if he were not simultaneously man and God. That is why Psalm 110, widely used in the liturgy, was one of the favourites of the New Testament and of the first Christians to demonstrate the identity of Messiah, son of David, and Son of God

For Jesus the important thing was to purify the excessively political idea about the Messiah, son of King David. Although he accepted being called “son of David” by the infirm, he preferred to call himself “Son of man”, a messianic title given to Christ by the prophet Daniel (7, 13). The ‘Son of Man’, the title that Jesus adopts, is more closely associated to the image of the Servant of the Lord rather than the Messianic title. This is how we see him in the repeated messages of his passion, death and resurrection.

Together with the apostles and early Christians, we too must make a profound conversion in our understanding and following of Jesus. The glorious son of David who, despite his divine condition, did not boast of his category of God and changed his throne and the sceptre, power and wealth for service, poverty, suffering, humiliation and death, to attain eternal power (Philippians 2:6).                                                                                                                                                                                                          

 PRAYER

 Son of God blessed are you because you have revealed to us the secret of triumph and life. Not power and wealth, but service, poverty and humiliation. Allow us to unite ourselves as disciples and give us your Spirit to give witness before the world of the signs we as Christian’s acclaim, your cross and your love. Amen.