23^rd  SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME  - CYCLE C - 2019           

Who knows the plans of God? We discover them during the journey of our life, in which the Lord walks by our side, and gives us light   to discover the meaning of the events.  

THE BOOK OF WISDOM

ü  It is a "deutero-canonical" book.  These books have never been accepted by the people of Israel   as being revealed by God, and neither do our brothers of other Christian traditions. However,  our church has always accepted them as revealed by God.  .  

ü  Its traditional name is "Wisdom of Solomon."    

ü  Why of Solomon, if it was written many centuries after the death of Solomon?  

ü  It is a tradition of the people of Israel to attribute all the wisdom literature to Solomon.  

ü  In the first ten chapters of the book, wisdom is greatly exalted, but from chapter eleven on it is justice that is present in all the chapters, and even in the first ten.  

ü  Would that be that justice is a part of wisdom? This is left to our reflection. 

ü  The author finds himself in a cross culture society: Greek and Semitic (Israelite)  

ü  We discover that, through the literary style and language.   

ü  The theme of the book, as Luis Alonso Schoëkel says:   is a treatise on government justice.   

ü  Syria was loosing its power before the growing strength of the Babylonian Empire.  

ü  the author of the book already acknowledges the immortality of the human being "God created man for immortality.... 2,23"   

ü  This verse is a clear answer to the anguish form evil and from suffering of Job and of Qoelet.   

ü  Wisdom is considered as Word and as Spirit.   

ü  We are already in the threshold of the Gospel grace.

FIRST READING. Wis 9:13-18b

v Who knows the mind of God?  

v What men think is always small, insignificant even when it seems great.   

v The author says that the body, that is earthly, prevents us from flying, from rising, it is a dead weight that drags us downward.   

v We do not have to understand this literally, because our body is a body with a spirit, and our soul is an incarnate spirit. As human beings, we are both spirit and matter, which we cannot separate, if we could do so we would not be human beings anymore.    

v We have a hard time understanding the events of our life, of our history, of what surround us. 

v The author asks who will be able to discover and understand fully the thing from heaven.   

v Only the one who has received the Spirit of God can understand what God commands.  

v His Spirit makes straight our path.  

RESPONSORIAL PSALM -Ps 90 3-4,5-6,12-13,14-17

IN EVERY AGE, O LORD, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR REFUGE

You turn man back to dust

saying "Return, o children of men."

for a thousand years in your sight

are as yesterday, now that it is past

or as a watch of the night.

IN EVERY AGE, O LORD, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR REFUGE

You make an end of them in their sleep

the next morning they are like the changing grass

which at dawn springs up anew

but by evening wilts and fades.

IN EVERY AGE, O LORD, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR REFUGE

Teach us to number our days aright

that we may gain wisdom of heart

return, O Lord! how long?

have pity on your servants!

IN EVERY AGE, O LORD, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR REFUGE

Fill us at daybreak with your kindness

that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days

and may the gracious care of the Lord our God be ours

prosper the work of our hands for us!

Prosper the work of our hands!

IN EVERY AGE, O LORD, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR REFUGE

ü  All the verses we read this Sunday are a reminder of the greatness of God and of our smallness. 

ü  But the Lord loves us, thus we ask him with great trust to look at us with compassion. 

ü  We also ask him with great trust that his goodness may come upon us, so that our works will please him.   

GOSPEL   LK 14:25-33

Jesus continues to teach on his journey to Jerusalem, and he continues to teach during  our life  journey.

Today we are going to hear from him three simple lessons, which are really only one: the conditions for following him.   

     The first lesson confuses us "to hate father, mother...” 

·       But to be able to understand what he really means we need to know the language he is using    

·       Jesus speaks in his own native language the Aramean, which belongs to the Semitic group of languages and participates of its characteristics. To hate does not mean the same as it means in our language. To hate is to love less.  

·       Thus, he is telling us that we have to love him more than anybody else, even more than our own self. 

·       What he really tells us is that we cannot love ourselves more than we love him.  

·       If we are sincere, we will acknowledge that when we say that we love very much our family, in this love there is a lot of selfishness. Each one of us may reflect on that.     

·       If we do not love him over everything and everybody else, we cannot be his disciples.  

     The second example is the man who wants to build.   

·       It seems that the Lord wants to teach us prudence, do not begin if you cannot finish the work, either because you do not have the financial means or enough workers to do it.  

·       If you begin in these conditions you will not be able to complete and you will suffer humiliation

     The third example is very similar to the second one, but the situation is war, do not go to war against your enemy if you do not have enough soldiers and enough arms, because you are going to be defeated.  

     The Lord finishes his teaching saying that if we do not renounce all our possessions we cannot be his disciples: 

·       to renounce what we possess seems to be  the same as   to love him more than anything and anybody else. 

·       to renounce seems  also to be the same as the prudence we need in our lives, prudence that will help us to follow him, to be his disciple.   

SECOND READING   Flm 9-10, 12-17

Ø  The letter to Philemon is a personal letter of Paul to his friend Philemon. 

Ø  However, the theme is so important for our Christian life, that those who put together the canon of the Scriptures considered worth to include this letter.  

Ø  The theme is slavery, but it is not a treatise on slavery, but a teaching about the equality, the fraternity among all the human beings.   

Ø  Onessimus is a slave of Philemon who has fled from his master.  

Ø  This could result in his execution, but Onessimus has heard about Paul, the friend of his master, and he goes to him for help.    

Ø  Paul evangelizes and baptizes him, Onessimus becomes a Christian, a member of the community of faith, thus a brother.  

Ø  And then Paul asks Onessimus to return to his master, and gives him this letter addressed to Philemon.   

Ø  Paul asks Philemon to welcome back Onessimus, he asks even more, to receive him as if Onessimus were Paul.   

Ø  This is a short letter that has only one chapter, but it is a letter filled with the tenderness of Paul and the radical demands of the Gospel.  

Ø  We have already seen these demands in today's Gospel as we have heard the Lord saying to us that we have to love him above everything else, even ourselves.   

CLARETIAN CORNER   

All that God our Lord has been pleased to manifest to me regarding the situation of the church, will be found in the notes I handed over to my prelate on June 9 1856, through my confessor D.N.N

The particular notes in those writings must not be presented because the Lord did not state that they be made public by now, but as a friendly advice for the person in question. Rather he wills to keep them secret until the very subject discovers them if he deems it so for the glory of His divine Majesty. God our Lord loves him that much.  Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography  81.

      When I was a little boy I was given a pair of rosary beads, and I was more pleased with them than with the greatest treasure. I used them after school when my classmates and I marched in double file to the nearby church where our teacher led us in reciting a part of the rosary.

      At about this time I discovered in our house a book called El Roser, the rose-tree, which contained pictures and explanations of the mysteries of the rosary. I learned from it how to recite the rosary, litanies, and other prayers. When my teacher heard of this, he was very pleased and had me kneel by his side in church so that I could lead the rosary. When the older boys saw how this had put me in the teacher's good graces, they learned it too. From then on we alternated in leading every other week, so that all came to learn and practice this holy devotion that, after Holy Mass, is the most profitable.

St. Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 44-45.  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CLARET, Antonio María Claret, Autobiography.

PAGOLA, José A.  Following in the Footsteps of Jesus. Meditations on the Gospels for Year C.

PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiography

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según las Escrituras, Año C.

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso, Comentario a La Biblia de nuestro Pueblo.