XXIX SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME- CYCLE B – OCTOBER 18, 2015 

The readings again this Sunday are about service, a service accomplished giving our life for the sake of others.   

FIRST READING : Is 53:10-11

Ø  The Servant is faithful to God.  On verso 10 Isaiah says that the Servant has been crushed, tortured not for his own sins but for the sins of others.       

Ø  Through his suffering, and the offering of his life the Servant will see his descendants in a long life.   For the people of Israel and also for other peoples, a long life was a sign of God’s blessing, for those who were pleasing to God and did his will. 

Ø  As a consequence of his affliction, of his offering his life, the Servant will see the light. The light is always a symbol of the presence of God, of everything that is related to God, to love, to the truth.  

Ø  Through his sufferings he will justify many, and will take away their sins.  What a beautiful description of the mission of the Servant. Very soon the Church started to consider Jesus to be that servant, who had given  his life on the cross for  our salvation.

Ø  Every Sunday the Church through the readings invites us to follow the way of Jesus, today the invitation is to  offer our life to the Lord  so that he may unite us to his redemptive sacrifice for the sake of men and women, our brothers and sisters.    

Responsorial Psalm Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22

R.  Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you. 

ü  God’s project is instantaneous, but it unfolds through history, it takes time, a long time for us to discover it and to accomplish it; but God accompanies us and protects us on our journey.   

ü  As we have recited in the psalm, the Lord loves justice and right, his goodness fills the earth.  How encouraging  are these words!   

ü  The psalmist continues saying words of peace and consolation: the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who hope in his kindness.  

ü  The last stanza that we will pray this Sunday is like a sigh of the soul: our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield.  With such a protection whom shall we fear?   

GOSPEL Mk 10:35-45

«  In the verses above today’s Gospel we have encountered the man who wanted to reach eternal life, but was unable to leave behind his many possessions because he had put his security on them, and he went away sad because he had renounced to follow the good master.   

«  The disciples have heard what will be the recompense for those who leave everything behind and follow the Teacher.  

«  Now the two brothers, called in another place “the sons of thunder”  come and ask for a treatment of preference for them. (In Matthew’s Gospel it is the mother who makes this petition to Jesus)  

«  In the glory, in the future kingdom, in the eternal life they want to sit in places of honor, they have not understood the lesson that Jesus wanted to teach to the man who wanted to reach eternal life, neither have they understood the lesson on service which he had given some days before. The first shall be the last, and the one who wants to be the most important shall be the servant of all.  

«  This is the eternal weakness of all us human beings, we want to be unique, the first, the most important, but we look for all of this in the wrong place, away from what God teaches us and away from what can give us happiness.      

«  And Jesus assures them that they will drink from the chalice he will drink, they will accomplish what God has prepared for them.  

«  They will also be baptized, with the same baptism that Jesus himself will be baptized, his death on the cross

«  In a word he is telling them that they will be very close to him, as they have asked, so close that they will share in his cross, but to give the important position they ask for, these are given by the Father.   I suspect that in the kingdom of the Father there are not places of honor, the only important one is God, all the rest we are servants sometimes good, sometimes unworthy.    

«  In the Synod on the New Evangelization celebrated in 2012, a  bishop from the Philippines said something very interesting, something that may help us to reflect  on our mission as a church and as members of the ecclesial community: 

o   He wonders about the indifference toward the church and its message, on the rejection of the church and he says  

o   The new evangelization calls us to a new humility  

o   The Gospel cannot coexist with pride. When pride invades the heart of the church, it hurts the proclamation of the Gospel.  

o   The task of the new evangelization has to begin by a sense of admiration and reverence toward the human race and its cultures.  (This is like and echo of the II Vatican Council that had an optimistic sight on the goodness of the world and on the accomplishments of the human race.) 

o   The evangelization has been hurt and continues to be hurt  by the arrogance of its messengers.   

o   The  hierarchy has to eliminate arrogance, hypocrisy, cannot anymore cover up its faults;  because we are humans in the midst of our flock.  

o   He continues saying “Our mission is to propose not to impose.    

«  Strong words pronounced by one of the teachers and shepherds of the church; but these words are for all and every one of us. How good it is that we acknowledge the need  to be humble, one among many, only then we will be leaven in the dough; only then we will be counted among those who need the doctor, need Jesus, who has come for our salvation.

«  May our good Teacher who is humble teach us the beauty of this virtue which is the truth.

SECOND READING: Heb 4:14-16

ü  We have a high priest who has passed through the heavens  

ü  This priest is Jesus, the Son of God   

ü  This high priest, Jesus, is able to understand our condition since he has shared it with us, he knows our weaknesses, because he has also experienced the weakness of the flesh, because he has been tested in everything like us, except sin.   

ü  He cannot sin because to sin is to go back to nothingness, this cannot happen to him because he is the life, he is God himself

ü   The author of the letter invites us to come close to the throne of grace, of mercy to find help.   

o   The throne is the symbol of the authority of our high priest, symbol because in the eternal life there are no thrones, but Scripture uses these images  to help us understand the message.  

o   It is a throne of grace, mercy, kindness, words used in the Old Testament to describe God who is compassion and mercy.    

CLARETIAN CORNER

In this affliction that only my God knows how deeply was piercing my soul, HIS Divine Majesty deigned to console me from that sacrament of love  and told me very lovingly to have courage, that I might proceed to the profession, that the clause in Bull did not impede my profession since we had already the monastery and the rents were most sure  for the capitals were in the hands of truth itself and, in consequences, never would they be lacking, to admit the foundation in those terms since it would never be done another way. And to tell my prelate that thus the sacred letters of the Bull were fulfilled and not to be afraid. With this I was very consoled and with a certain hope that it would happen this way. And the Lord infused in me a great courage to tell it to my prelate. Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 214.  

At the beginning of June, 1857, we arrived in Madrid, where I was presented to Her Majesty, the Queen. On the fifth of that month the royal decree of my appointment as the queen's confessor was approved and published.  A few days later the queen told me that one of my duties would be to attend to the religious instruction of the Infanta Isabel, then five years old.  I always took personal charge of her lessons and on April 11, 1862, when she was ten years old, she made her First Holy Communion, in the company of her mother. I had been hearing her confession since she was seven. Presently, in addition to her instructions, she has made a ten-day retreat. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 614.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CLARET, Antonio María. Autobiografía.

PARIS, María Antonia. Autobiografía  en Escritos.  

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso. LA BIBLIA DE NUESTRO PUEBLO. Misioneros Claretianos. China 2008.

The Catholic Study Bible, second edition.

Información sobre el Sínodo de la “Nueva Evangelización” tomada de Whispers in the Loggia.