FIRST READING – Ex 20:1-17
Ø The people who has been liberated from Egypt by Yahweh, and has made a Covenant with Yahweh on Mount Sinai, is called by Yahweh himself to translate the covenant into a behavior which will reflect the reality of the love between God and his people, and the thankful response of the people.
Ø The Law, the Torah is about our relationship with God, with the other persons and with the rest of creation.
Ø The covenant has been made between God and his people, therefore there will not be sins against God and sins against neighbor, every sin is always against God.
Ø This will explain why Jesus on the night before the passion left only one commandment, the fraternal love, because this love includes the love of God.
Ø The gratefulness towards Yahweh who loves and liberates, is the reason for us to live the law, if we separate the law from the covenant it loses its meaning.
Ø The biblical morality passes through a thankful love for the Lord, to a marital commitment, and finally to a morality of imitation.
Ø The people of Israel is called to continue in the world the liberation started by God.
Ø With its fidelity to the covenant, made reality in the precepts of the Law, Israel will help his brothers and sisters, the members of the human race, to discover, through its witness, the God who loves them.
Ø The code of the Covenant is formulated in the negative form. This is the most open way to establish a precept, much more than the positive formulation.
Ø The negative formulation of the Law allows us to do all the other actions which are not forbidden.
Ø This way to formulate the Law makes it universal for all the times and places, and peoples.
Ø The content of the 10 Words of love from God on Mount Sinai:
o The first Word,
§ God reminds Israel all the things he has done for the people. Thus Israel will not have any other god, other gods.
§ God says “your God” meaning that he will be faithful to his people
§ Thus it is a call to be faithful like Yahweh. The image here is the love between married people, and sin considered like adultery or marital unfaithfulness.
o The second Word
§ To respect the Name of God.
§ According to the culture of the Bible, the name is equivalent to the person, we are asked to respect and love our God and Lord.
§ In some way we are asked to acknowledge the presence of God in creation making everything, and every reality, sacred.
§ This will require from us to respect any created life, everything created by God.
o The third Word
§ The sabbatical repose in imitation of Yahweh who created in six days, and on the seventh he rested.
§ The people through the ten Words of the Law is invited to imitate his/her God.
§ Rest in which God re-creates us, renew what has been wasted, it is an invitation to seek God and thus also the community of the believers to be re-created together.
§ God has blessed the sabbath (the day of repose), has made it holy as he, the Lord, is Holy.
In the Words that follow these three Words, God invites his people to look to the rest of creation, and reflect how to respect and love creation, because it is the work of God.
o In the other seven Words of love God forbids us :
§ To damage life in the many ways we might do it.
§ The infidelity in the love of marriage, image of the love of God for his people.
§ To steal, to take from our neighbor what is his or hers. It forbids also to dishonnor the material goods of creation.
§ To say lies
§ To covet the possessions of our brother or sister.
o At the same time God invites us to all the positive actions derived from these realities:
§ To love our parents, our family, our mother-land, our community , our church, the different groups we belong to.
§ To respect life since it is a gift from God, who is the God of life.
§ To respect and be thankful for the gift of our sexuality which enables us to communicate with others, especially at the deepest level as in marriage. I say communicate with others, because our sexuality is who we are, and we relate to others through our being: we see, we talk, we think, we love, we get angry …. according to our sexuality)
§ To take care of the goods of creation.
§ To speak always the truth in words and in deeds. To express in the different arts the beauty of the Creator and of his creation.
§ To respect what belongs to our neighbor.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 19:8, 9, 10, 11.
LORD, YOU HAVE THE WORDS OF EVERLASTING LIFE
SECOND READING 1Co 1:22-25
« The Jews asked for a sign from Jesus in order to believe, to accept his message.
« The Greeks, full as they are of their human wisdom, seek for “wisdom”.
« But Paul says that Christ is the ‘wisdom’ of God, which seems to be non-sense or scandal.
« And Paul adds something strongly hard the “weakness of God = Jesus on the Cross” is more powerful than men.
« Christ on the cross on the Golgotha is the Covenant, which is expressed in the New Law, the Law of the stumbling block of the cross. THIS IS OUR LAW! THE LAW OF THE FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED AND RISEN!!! Foolishness, weakness, stumbling block…
GOSPEL OF JOHN 2:13-25
This Gospel has two parts: the purification of the Temple and the Sign given by Jesus. This episode happens during o The first Passover of Jesus in the first year of his ministry
o John in his Gospel speaks of three Passovers of Jesus: the Passover of the Temple, the Passover of the Bread of Life and the Passover of Jesus’ death.
o The Synoptic Gospels speak of only one Passover, the last one, where they put the present episode.
§ Jesus, as he overturns the tables of the money-changers, and drives away the animals, and the people who sold them, says “Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
§ The Evangelist adds that his disciples “remembered” the words of Scripture: “Zeal for your house consumes me.”
§ “To remember” does not mean to look back, but it is to make present today. It is to go deeply into the meaning of the words which we remember, this is what the disciples did.
o The second part of this Reading has to do with the sign that the Jews ask from Jesus:
§ Jesus gives a sign which is at the same time mysterious and provocative.
§ The destruction of the Temple, and the rebuilding of it.
§ John says that, only after the resurrection, the disciples “remembered” and understood that Jesus was speaking of the Temple of his body.
§ Jesus is
· The true Temple where God is worshiped in spirit and in truth
· The Temple where we adore God as the First Word from Sinai tells us to do
· But Jesus is also the Law, the fullness of the Words spoken by God from Mount Sinai.
· Because God is the LAW, and Jesus is the Word=the Son= the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity made man, He(Jesus) is the true LAW made visible to us.
· From the moment the Incarnate Word of God=Jesus has lived among us, we do not have any other LAW than his WORDS which are the echo and the fullness of the WORDS OF LOVE SPOKEN BY YAHWEH ON MOUNT SINAI.
CYCLE A
For those of you who have catechumens in your parishes, and use cycle A instead of cycle B, during the three following Sundays of Lent, I have prepared the meditation on the gospel.
Gospel of John 4: 4-26.29-42
Ø Luis Alonso Schoēkel in his commentary found in the Biblia de nuestro Pueblo makes a very interesting reflection on the story of the Samaritan woman:
o According to him in the Bible a woman is the symbol, and the incarnation of her people. Thus he invites us to put our attention not so much on the woman, as on the people of her town.
o According to the information we have, Samaria was being formed over a period of time by the union of 5 different tribes, after it was conquered by the Assyrians.
o Each tribe brought its own god or idol. Let us keep that in mind as we reflect on this passage:
§ Jesus goes through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem, and on so doing he incurs into a legal impurity. Why? Because Samaria was considered somehow heretic and schismatic.
§ He stops at the well, a woman comes to draw water from the well.
§ A man, and especially a Rabbi, was not suppose to speak to a woman in public, this was against their dignity. Jesus does not pay any attention to those human rules.
§ John says that it was noon, most probably he wants to convey a message to us. The normal time, to come to the well to draw water, would be early in the morning when there is no heat, but this woman comes when it is hot. Why? Maybe because due to her life she is not accepted in the town, and so she cannot join the other women at the well.
§ Jesus asks her for water, the woman at the beginning does not like too much this Jew, but nonetheless she feels attracted to him.
§ As the conversation unfolds, the position of both is switched. At the beginning Jesus is thirsty and asks her for water. Now the woman wants water, so she will not have to come to the well anymore, and she will not be thirsty either.
§ Jesus now switches abruptly the conversation, the woman asks for water and Jesus will say something, which will touch the deepest recesses of her heart. She wants her life to be easy, and Jesus is about to make it difficult.
§ Call your husband - I do not have a husband - You are right you have had 5 husbands (remember the 5 idols of the people of Samaria) and the one you have no is not yours.
§ The woman is making a process of going deeper and deeper into her own being, and she realizes that she is a sinner, and she sees that Jew whom she did not like at the beginning, is a prophet.
§ This prophet teaches her that from now on God will be worshiped in spirit and in truth everywhere, that the temple will not be needed anymore.
§ The woman now says that, she knows that when the Messiah comes he will teach us everything. And now she receives the most wonderful, and awesome revelation from the mouth of Jesus “I, who speak to you ,am he.”
§ The journey of faith and of conversion which that woman makes guided by Jesus is the image and example of any true process of conversion.
§ The woman leaves the bucket she does not need it anymore. The bucket is the symbol of her thirst for love, “5 husbands and the one now is not yours.” She is a woman seeking to love and to be loved, but now she has found that love in Jesus, she does not need the waters of the empty human love she was seeking. Thus she leaves the bucket at the well and runs to the town.
§ She tells the people, come and meet a man who has said to me everything I have done, will he be the Messiah?
§ Do we have a bucket we try to fill up? Who are our husbands? Do we allow Jesus to talk to us? Do we run to share with others the marvels the Lord has done for us and in us?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- GUILLÉN TORRALBA, Juan, “Éxodo” en Comentario al Antiguo Testamento I. La Casa de la Biblia, Estella Navarra, 1997.
- LA BIBLIA DE NUESTRO PUEBLO, comentarios de Luis Alonso Schökel. Misioneros Claretianos, 2010.
- LOZANO, Juan Manuel, Escritos María Antonia París, Estudio crítico, “El Misionero Apostólico”. Barcelona 1985.
- RAVASI, GIANFRANCO. Según las Escrituras. Doble Comentario de las lecturas del domingo. Año B. San Pablo, Bogotá, Colombia 2005.
- VIÑAS, José María, cmf y BERMEJO, Jesús, cmf. “Autobiografía ” de San Antonio María Claret.
I was very attentive, overwhelmed to what was happening, and it seemed to me that I was reading the Holy Law of God, but without seeing any books nor letters; I was seeing it written, and I was understanding it so very well, that it seemed to me it was imprinting in my soul but in a particular way the book of the Holy Gospels, which till then I had never read, neither the Sacred Scripture (O.T). After, by God’s grace, I have read something and I have seen it written word by word, as our Lord taught it to me from the holy tree of the cross. It seems to me that the words I understood were coming out from his host holy mouth. (María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters. Autobiography 5.)
From the very beginning I have been thrilled by the preaching style of Jesus, his likenesses and parables. And how He was persecuted! He was a sign of contradiction, persecuted for his teaching, his works, and his very person. Finally, they took his life amid affronts, torments, and insults, making Him suffer the most shameful and painful death imaginable. (St. Antonio Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 222.)
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