XXVII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - CYCLE B – 2018 

The teachings this Sunday are about love between the married couple.  

FIRST READING : Gn 2:18-24

THE BOOK OF GENESIS  

«  Genesis is the name of the first book of the Greek translation of the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible the name is Beresit= In the beginning.   

«  It is the book about the origins. It has two parts, the first about the origin of the universe and the human race, the second about the origin of the people of Israel.  

«  The book is formed by narrations and genealogies of Israel’s ancestors. 

«  Chapters 1-11 show mythical characteristics, like in the literature of the surrounding peoples. 

«  The myths are part of the system of beliefs of a given culture or community, that considers those myth to be true. Very often the myths try to explain the origins of that culture, or  the origins of the world, or try to respond to the questions human beings have about: suffering, evil, death, sickness….. 

«  In the case of the narrations in the book of Genesis the sacred authors used the myths from the surrounding peoples and modified them according to their faith in God. By means of these 11 chapters the people of Israel wants to give the message that God is the creator who creates by his word.  

«  In these 11 chapters we find especial characters, among them Adam the first man created by God. Noah who represents the prototype of the just man. Adam represents the human race created by God. Noah represents the human race saved by God, he is like a new Adam, since the story of the flood is the story of a new beginning.  

«  As we proceed  reading  the first 11 chapters of Genesis, we realize that running parallel to God’s kindness, we see the human creature going deeper and deeper into a world of sin and evil: from the disobedience of the first couple, to the killing of one brother of another driven by jealousy in the story of Cain and Abel, to Noah spared from the waters of the flood that eliminated the human beings because of their general sinfulness, to the climax of human pride, ungratefulness and mistrust in the story of Babel  

THIS SUNDAY’S READING

§  God realizes that man cannot be alone. 

§  The narration tells us that God molded with clay all the animals, but when the man saw them, he could not find a suitable partner for him.  

§  Then God decides to make another being like Adam

§  Adam is so surprised on seeing the beauty of this new creature, who goes beyond his expectations, that he exclaims:  this is truly bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! That means, “she is like me”.  

§  The first couple of the human race has appeared on earth, couple that is united in love. A couple that is joyfully surprised when they see each other face to face. A couple that is the image of God who is love.    

§  The sacred text says that this is the reason for man to leave his family to unite himself to his woman, and thus become one flesh. 

§  The love that is born from this union and the strength of the commitment that springs from this covenant goes beyond the blood strings of the family of origin  thus, the text says: man will abandon his father and mother…   

 RESPONSORIAL PSALM – Ps 128  

  May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
your children like olive plants
around your table.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
May you see your children's children.
Peace be upon Israel!
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives. 

ü  The blessing of the man who fears the Lord is his work, his wife and his children.

ü  His blessing is to be blessed by the Lord in Zion, and to see the prosperity of the holy city Jerusalem all the days of his life.

ü  Peace is part of the blessing from God to those who fear the Lord.   

GOSPEL  MK 10:2-16

«  The liturgy allows us to use the long or the short version of this gospel, in this commentary I will use the short one which has to do with the matrimony, leaving the rest of the text which has to do with the children, because we already have dealt with this theme in former commentaries.     

«  Jesus leaves from his native land and goes to Jerusalem, where, according to what he has told them, he will suffer, die and rise from the dead.  

«  The Pharisees want to know what Jesus thinks about   Dt. 24:1 on divorce.

«  Some interpreters of this text said that a man could repudiate or give a document of divorce to his wife, for any reason whatsoever: he did not like his wife anymore, the wife had burned the meal etc.. Hoever the wife could not divorce her husband.  

«  Jesus asks them what does Moses say about that, and then he explains to them, that since the people were not ready to understand, accept and live the commitment of matrimony as it had been thought and designed by the Creator, Moses allowed them to divorce their wives.   

«  He speaks them about the text in Genesis. We have already commented on this text in the first Reading.      

«  It is true that the word of God has to be interpreted according to the reality of the present moment in order to be fully understood, however there are some foundations put by God which cannot either  be changed   or ignored. It is the case of the present theme.    

      The equality between man and woman.  

      Love as the foundation of the conjugal union.  

      Jesus insists on the fidelity to the  covenant of love.  

      Marriage is a covenant of love, which implies equality of rights, dignity and, excludes any relationship based on dominion of one over the other.  

      I write below a sentence from Luis Alonso Schökel, which I consider very beautiful:

                                     As long as there is love, there will be a matrimony and there will also be a heart able to dream and to forgive. 

SECOND READING: Heb 2:8-11

LETTER TO THE HEBREWS

Ø  The Letter to the Hebrews is not a letter as such, because its literary style does not correspond to that of a letter, it is an exhortation as we read on   13,22   “a word of exhortation”

Ø  It is one of the most important theological writings of the New Testament.  

The formulation of the doctrine about the priesthood of Christ, and about the sacrificial value of his death is found in this letter   

Ø  It is not probable that Paul be the author of this letter, as it has been  considered in former times.  

Ø  The style of the letter is not Paul’s style, but the themes are very close to the theology of Paul.  

Ø  Some authors believe that the writer could be Apollo, whom we know through the writings of the New Testament.   

THIS SUNDAY’S READING

ü  One of the messages of this text is the solidarity between Jesus and the human race.  

ü  His death brings good to us

ü  Because the Creator wants that all his children have part in his glory, maybe we could formulate this in another way saying that, he wants all of us to partake his joy and happiness without end.    

ü  The author continues saying that it was fitting that God should make perfect through suffering Jesus the author and leader of our salvation.  

ü  This statement challenges us on the value of suffering which we try to avoid because we do not understand it. 

ü  The sanctifier and the sanctified have the same human condition that is why he is not ashamed to call us “his brothers and sisters.” 

ü  The beauty of this text goes beyond our capacity to fully grasp the meaning of the Word that God says to us. 

CLARETIAN CORNER   

My dear sister in Our Lord Jesus: I have received your letter from August 6 and having read it, I am telling the three of you to come for the foundation in Tremp. I have already written an official letter last month to the Vicar General to send you using some of the pretexts he insinuated to me, because if we have to wait for the Royal Order, only God knows when it will be, because in the offices they take a long time to finish that kind of businesses.  You cannot imagine how many comings and goings this file cots me.  Few days ago I was at the Minister of Grace and Justice Office and they told me they were going to dispatch it immediately, and that they would send it to the Royal Council, I think that in the next mail it will be dispatched.   At least it will not be lost for lack of insistence, but since they dispatched the religious businesses by force and unwillingly, they look for all the conceivable difficulties, and so they go on and on… I have told this to Her Majesty and although Her Majesty wants to please me and gives the order to dispatch it, they present a lot of pretexts and troubles. St. Antony Mary Claret, Founder, letter to Maria Antonia Paris from October 1858. History of the Religious of Mary Immaculate Claretian Missionary Sisters, c.VIII note 39.   

A brother of Sr. María Gertrudis came to welcome us, and since he could not get into the boat, we greeted each other from the edging, and he went immediately to the Palace, where, as we learned with great satisfaction, our Most Reverend Archbishop had arrived the day before; imagine what a happy surprise we had. After a while Mr Barril with Fr. Sansoli, Mr Ignacio and another gentleman came to take us to the Palace where we had the joy to receive the blessing from our most reverend Father the Archbishop and from Rev. Palau. Fr Currius was overwhelmed from joy. They made us eat in their company, and in the evening they accompanied us to this convent .  Venerable María Antonia París, foundress, letter to Rev. Dionisio González, June 1959 in the History.. c.VIII note 57.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALVAREZ, Jesús Alvarez, cmf.  History of the Religious of Mary Immaculate Claretian Missionary Sisters,  1980.

PAGOLA, José A. Following in the Footsteps of Jesus – Meditations on the Gospel for Year B.

RAVASI, GIANFRANCO. Según las Escrituras – Año B. Traducido por Justiniano Beltrán. Bogotá 2005.

SAGRADA BIBLIA. Versión oficial de la Conferencia Episcopal Española.

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