Published: June 5, 2026
There is a moment in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus, teaching in the temple, turns a well-worn assumption upside down with a single, penetrating question. It is not an argument. It is not a rebuke. It is an invitation to look more deeply at who the Messiah truly is — and, by extension, at who Jesus truly is. "How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David?" he asks. And then, citing King David's own words from Psalm 110, he draws out the paradox that changes everything: if David calls the Messiah "my lord," how can the Messiah simply be David's son?
The great crowd, Mark tells us, heard this with delight.
It is worth pausing on that detail. Delight. Not confusion, not frustration, not silence — delight. Something in the hearts of that crowd resonated with what Jesus was saying, even if the full meaning had not yet crystallized for them. There is something deeply human in this response: we recognize truth when we encounter it, even before we can fully articulate it. The people listening to Jesus that day sensed that they were in the presence of something — someone — far greater than a political liberator or a royal descendant who would restore the kingdom of Israel by force.
Jesus is quoting from Psalm 110, one of the most celebrated messianic psalms in Jewish tradition. The psalm opens with a striking line: "The Lord said to my lord." The scribes of Jesus's day had long interpreted this psalm as a prophecy about the coming Messiah. But they understood that prophecy in a narrowly nationalistic way. The Messiah, in their vision, would be a descendant of David — a warrior king who would overthrow Roman oppression, establish a new Davidic dynasty, and restore Israel to its former glory. A son of David. Nothing more, nothing less.
Jesus does not deny the connection to David. He does not dismiss the prophecy or overturn the tradition. What he does is far more radical: he reveals that the tradition is not wrong, merely incomplete. Yes, the Messiah comes from the line of David. And yet David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, called this Messiah "my lord." A father does not call his own son "my lord." A king does not address his descendant as one greater than himself. And David, who was himself a king and a man after God's own heart, would only use such language for one who stood above him entirely — not merely in rank, but in nature.
The question Jesus is really asking is the question that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith: Who, exactly, is standing before you?
Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of Saint Boniface, the eighth-century English missionary who became the Apostle of the Germans. Boniface understood this question in the most concrete and courageous way possible. He did not merely admire Jesus from a respectful distance or appreciate him as a wise moral teacher. He staked his life on the conviction that Jesus is Lord — not a lord, not one inspiring figure among many, but the Lord before whom every other authority bows. It was this conviction that sent Boniface into the forests of pagan Germania, that gave him the boldness to fell the great sacred oak at Geismar that the local people worshipped as the dwelling of the god Thor — and to emerge from that act unharmed, which shook the faith of the pagans to its foundation. It was this same conviction, undiminished, that led Boniface to his martyrdom in Frisia in 754, when he was killed by a hostile crowd while preparing to celebrate Confirmation. Witnesses say he raised his copy of the Gospels over his head as a shield. He died in the embrace of the very Word he had proclaimed.
Boniface heard the question of Jesus and gave his whole life as the answer.
For us, living in very different circumstances but facing the same fundamental question, the challenge is no less serious. It is easy — comfortable, even — to relate to Jesus as a great historical figure, an inspiring teacher, a model of compassion and wisdom. Many people of goodwill, both inside and outside the Church, are happy to go that far. But Jesus himself, in this brief exchange in the temple, will not let us stop there. His question is designed to break open the too-small categories we bring to him. If David, the greatest king in Israel's history, called the Messiah "my lord," then this Messiah is not simply a product of history who can be neatly filed away under "admirable figures from the ancient world." He is Lord. He is, as the Church has always proclaimed, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father — who also, in the profound mystery of the Incarnation, entered fully into human history as a son of David and a son of Mary.
Both things are true at once. This is precisely what delights. The God who is beyond all creation also kneels at a carpenter's bench in Nazareth. The Lord before whom the angels prostrate also weeps at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. The one who sits at the right hand of the Father also allows himself to be arrested, tried unjustly, and crucified. The mystery of Jesus is not that he is a bit better than other great figures. The mystery is that he is, in the fullest possible sense, Lord — and that this Lord chose to become one of us.
The delight of the crowd in the temple is the delight that is still available to us today, in every Mass, every quiet moment of prayer, every act of charity done in his name. When we truly encounter Jesus — not the domesticated version we can manage and keep at a comfortable arm's length, but the real Jesus who stands before us in these pages — something stirs in the heart. Something that says: yes, this is true.
Saint Boniface responded to that delight by giving everything. We may not be called to a martyr's death, but we are all called to the same fundamental act: moving from admiration to surrender, from intellectual appreciation to whole-hearted discipleship.
The question still hangs in the air, quiet and persistent, as we leave Mass today: David called him Lord. Do you?
Gospel Reading: Mark 12:35-37 | Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr | Friday, June 5, 2026