Third Week of Advent - Monday - Discernment

Readings: Numbers 24:2-7,15-17; Matthew 21:23-27.

Balaam, whom we encounter in today’s first reading from the Book of Numbers, is a curious character: on one hand, he’s reviled as a “wicked man” who tries (and fails) to curse the nation of Israel (2 Peter 2:15), and on the other hand he’s revered as a gentile prophet, being given in the Midrashic interpretations of early Rabinnic Jews an exalted status amongst the gentiles equivalent to the status of Moses amongst the Jews. In today’s excerpt, he prophetically recognises Israel’s exalted calling in God’s plan of salvation (24:3-9) and foresees the coming of a Messianic Davidic King who will conquer and liberate (24:14-19). Baalam, it seems, was a man not born of the chosen people, who lived amongst Pagan idolators and worked as a sorcerer, yet whose eyes and ears God opened to realise the truth (24:4).

In a world saturated with competing truth claims, it is often difficult to discern what comes from God and what comes from man, and many people seem – like Balaam – to be deeply ambivalent, capable of spreading both profound truth and weaving confusion. It is this question of discerning the veracity of the claims implied by the actions of Christ that vexes the chief priests and elders in today’s gospel, who treat the Lord with deep suspicion, asking Him under whose authority He acts. Although we often associated ‘authority’ with ‘power’, ‘jurisdiction’, and ‘control’, the Latin auctoris closely associated with ‘authorship’ and ‘origination’. The task of discerning under what authority somebody acts is not merely about determining the mandate for their action, but also about determining which ‘story’ they are part of: are they part of the narrative written by God, or are they trying to write their own story, dissenting from God’s plan of salvation?

In our Dominican tradition, study serves an integral role in this task of discernment, helping us to seek truth amidst falsehood. As Christians, we find the fullness of truth about ourselves and our world in the Scriptures, and in the Tradition of the Church, but we can claim no 'monopoly' over truths, and so, looking at the world around us through the eyes of faith, we hope our study will enable us to find reflections of truth there: in the sciences, in the arts, and in our friendships with other people. Our study, however, is necessarily animated by our lives of prayer, through which we encounter Truth Himself - the incarnate Word of God -  who will open our eyes and our ears, like the prophet Balaam’s, to receive His saving message.