Our site uses cookies to improve the user experience and we recommend accepting its use to take full advantage of the navigation

Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Download
Gospel text (Mk 12:35-37): As Jesus was teaching in the temple area he said, "How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said: The Lord said to my lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.' David himself calls him 'lord'; so how is he his son?" The great crowd heard this with delight.

Jesus, the new David

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, in dispute with the Pharisees, Jesus himself gives a new interpretation of the Psalm 110. Indeed, to the idea of the Messiah as the new David with a new davidic Kingdom, Jesus Christ opposes a larger vision of the one who is to come: the true Messiah is not David’s son, but "David’s Lord"; He sits, not on David’s throne, but on God’s throne.

Traditionally, David is regarded as the principal author of the Psalms: he, thus, appears as the one who leads and inspires the prayer of Israel, he sums up all Israel’s sufferings and hopes. In the early Church, Jesus was immediately hailed as the new and real David. Therefore, the Psalms could be recited in a new way, yet without discontinuity, as prayer in communion with Jesus Christ.

—In the Psalms it is always Christ who is speaking, now as the head, now as the body. Yet, through Jesus Christ, all of us form a single subject and so —in union with him— we can truly speak to God.