SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - 2020

Ø  We begin  the ordinary time, which according to a liturgy professor is not so ordinary.    

Ø  During this year we will journey with Jesus in his mission of Messiah and Redeemer.  

Ø  The author of the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel which we will read during this year, writes to a Christian community from Jewish origin.  

Ø  He wants to help his brothers and sisters to discover  in Jesus the Messiah whom the prophets were announcing to us.    

Ø  However today the Gospel will be taken from the Gospel of John.  John the Baptist points out to Jesus as the Lamb of God.  

Ø  This three words "Lamb of God" have 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, 

Ø  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

v This reading is taken from one of the Servant’s Poems.   

v 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

v 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.   

v 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 from 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

R/ 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.
R/ Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
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.”
R/ Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
“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!”
R/ Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
R/ Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will..

·       This is a beautiful psalm in thought and in words.  

·       The psalmist says that he has waited trustfully for the Lord, who put in his mouth a new song.  

·       And on hearing him sing the song many will fear and trust in the Lord.   

·       Then he speaks to his God and says that God does not want sacrifices or holocausts.  

·       But the psalmist realizes that he has received ears to listen  

·       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."

·       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."  

·       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

GOSPEL  Jn 1:29-34 

John points out to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world

§  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.  

§  This man is the reason for him to had been sent to baptize.   

§  He had been told that the one upon whom the Spirit would come down was the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.    

§  I John have seen and testify that this man is the Son of God.

§  Is our life a testimony of our faith in Jesus son of God?  

SECOND READING  1Co 1:1-3

·       We begin today to read in the Sunday Mass the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians.

·       Paul is aware that he has received a call to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.   

·       Together with Sosthenes he writes to the church, the community of the faithful who live in Corinth.  

·       Community that has been sanctified in baptism and called to be holy.    

·       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.     

·       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.   

·       All called to be servant in the way of the great Servant Jesus.   

 CLARETIAN CORNER

 On October 24, 1870 Claret dies. This event caused a deep suffering to Mª Antonia,  as she writes on her Diary. She describes this event with words of affliction but with a great hope that the Lord helps her to see in the cross:   Being very much afflicted by the death of his Excellency Claret,  I prayed intensely to God for the renewal of the Holy Church because he had taken him,   how would his work be accomplished? Then His Divine Majesty said to me,   By chance has my word been abridged?  Trust my daughter,   wait a little while, and you will see what I do…. (from the book Two Pens Moved by the Same Spirit, p.20.

Two month later, in a letter to Currius he explains in more detail the benefits he expects from the Council: I have been very busy in getting information for the Council… many expect material benefits from the Council… I expect spiritual benefits.  We will know what to do;   I expect that the Council and his Doctrine will be a beacon which will show us the harbor of salvation in the midst of the storm which will still become stronger and  greater. Alas of the earth![…] He does not say what these benefits are, but he says they are spiritual; and besides, from his former letters we know that those benefits are in the line of the Renewal of the Church in the difficult society of the XIX century.  From the Notes of a Plan…  we know that his  preoccupation was the Church and, in it, the renewal of the clergy and the religious men and women, the good formation of the seminarians. (from the book Two Pens Moved by the Same Spirit, p.11.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MUÑOZ, Hortensia and TUTZO, Regina. Two Pens Moved by the Same Spirit. 2010

PAGOLA, José A.   El camino abierto por Jesús. PPC 2012