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We begin today
the ordinary time, which according to a liturgy professor is not so ordinary.
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During this year
we will journey with Jesus in his mission of Messiah and Redeemer.
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The author of the
Gospel of Matthew, Gospel which we will read during this year, writes to a
Christian community of Jewish origin.
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He wants to help
his brothers and sisters to discover in
Jesus the Messiah whom the prophets were presenting to us.
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However today the
Gospel will be taken from the Gospel of John.
John the Baptist points out to Jesus as the Lamb of God.
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This three words
"Lamb of God" has a deep meaning for a Jew, the lamb which was
immolated and eaten on the night of the Passover of the Lord, the night of their
liberation from the slavery in Egypt.,
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Lamb which prefigured
the true lamb who would take away the sin of the world and give the true
freedom to every human being.
FIRST READING - Is 49:3,5-6
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This reading is
taken from one of the Servant Poems. .
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Servant who has
been seen as the faithful servant of Yahweh, could be the people of Israel, one
of the prophets, and following the theological reflection of the new people of
God, the new Israel, the Church, is Jesus
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The text has
words coming from God, and words coming from the Servant. It is not a dialogue,
but an inner reflection, a conversation from the heart.
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The Lord says to
the Servant:
You are my
servant through whom I show my glory.
We may ask, what
is the glory of God? Is it his power, his greatness or on the contrary it is
his love, tenderness, we may say even his weakness, his ability to become
vulnerable?
The servant
speaks and acknowledges that God has formed him in his mother's womb, has given
him the mission to bring his people back to the love of his God.
He continues
saying that he has been glorified and God is his strength.
How has he been
glorified? In living and accomplishing the mission given to him in his mother's
womb.
God speaks again
to the Servant and says that he will not only help the tribes to come back to
God, but his mission will be wider, universal, he will be the light of the
nations.
so that the
salvation that the Lord offers may reach
to the ends of the earth.
RESPONSORIAL
PSALM - Ps 40 2-4,7-8,8-9,10
HERE
AM I LORD, I COME TO DO YOUR WILL
I have waited,
waited for the Lord
and he stooped
toward me and heard my cry
and he put a new
song into my mouth
a hymn to our God.
Sacrifice or
offering you wished not
but ears open to
obedience you gave me
Holocausts or sin
offerings you sought not;
then said I
"Behold I come."
y confiarán en el Señor.
In the written scroll it is prescribed for
me
to do your will, O
my God, is my delight
and your law is
within my heart.
I announced your
justice in the vast assembly
I did not restrain
my lips, as you O Lord know.
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This is a
beautiful psalm in thought and in words.
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The psalmist says
that he has waited trustfully for the Lord, who put in his mouth a new song.
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And on hearing
him sing the song many will fear and trust in the Lord.
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Then he speaks to
his God and says that God does not want sacrifices or holocausts.
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But the psalmist
realizes that he has received ears to listen
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and discovers
that the sacrifice, the holocaust pleasing to the Lord is to listen attentively
and answering to what he listens. His response is "Here I am."
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What I have to do
is found in the book of the Law, the psalmist says that he loves this will of
God written in the book, and says "your law is in my heart."
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He ends saying
that he has not kept his lips in silence but that with joy he has proclaimed
the joy and the justice of the Lord to the great assembly
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Is the justice written in the book of the new
Law, the Gospel, what our lips proclaim with joy to our brothers and
sisters?
GOSPEL Jn 1:29-34
§ Although we are in cycle
A, and we should be reading the Gospel of Matthew, today the liturgy uses
instead the Gospel of John.
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John points out
to Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
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He continues saying that Jesus is that man he
had spoken about to them, saying that he is above him, because he exists before
him.
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But this man is
the reason for him to had been sent to baptize.
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He had been told
that the one upon whom the Spirit would come down, was the one who would
baptize with the Holy Spirit.
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I John have seen
and testify that this man is the Son of God.
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Is our life a
testimony of our faith in Jesus son of God?
SECOND READING 1Co 1:1-3
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We begin today to
read in the Sunday Mass the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians.
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Paul is aware
that he has received a call to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.
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Together with
Sosthenes he writes to the church, the community of the faithful who live in
Corinth.
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Community that
has been sanctified in baptism and called to be holy.
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The letter is not
only addressed to the Corinthians, but to all of us who in some place of the world invoke the name
of the Lord Jesus.
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This letter is
thus addressed to us the church of Miami, of Madrid, of Rome, of Milan, of
Kimwenza, of Mysore, of Indonesia, of Japan.... all called to be holy as the
Father in heaven who makes the sun shine on the good and the bad, who makes the
rain fall on the just and on the sinner as well.
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All called to be servant
in the way of the great Servant Jesus.
Here, once
more our Lord put, as of what I can understand, before the eyes of my soul,
because with my bodily eyes I did not see anything, His most Holy Law and
Evangelical Counsel.
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.
Beside what I
saw in these sacred letters (without seeing anything with my bodily eyes as I
have said above) an interior voice in the depths of my soul, was explaining me
their meaning and the way to practice (…)
To my understanding I saw everything in Christ Crucified who, as he was
teaching me the divine letters, was explaining me their meaning. Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian
Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 4-6.
The world has always striven to hinder and persecute me,
but our Lord has taken care of me and frustrated all its evil designs. During
the month of August, 1847, a number of bands of men called "The Early
Risers" began to spring up all over Catalonia.The newspapers put it out
that the leaders of these groups would do nothing without consulting Father
Claret first. This was only a move of theirs to discredit my name and to invent
some pretext for apprehending me and putting an end to my preaching. But God
our Lord arranged matters so as to snatch me from their clutches. He sent me to
preach in the Canary Islands, as I shall now relate. Saint
Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography
477.
BIBLIOGRAFÍA
CLARET, Antonio María Claret, Autobiografía.
PAGOLA, José A.
El camino abierto por Jesús. PPC 2012
PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiografía
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