15 SUNDAY
IN ORDINARY TIME – CYCLE A – 2020
The theme of the first reading and the Gospel is about
agriculture: earth, water, seed; but these realities of our earth are used to
take us to the level of the Word of God which does not go back before having fulfilled
his mission, in the same way as the rain fertilizes the earth and the seed, the
Word changes our hearts and fulfills his mission: transforming us into the
image of Jesus.
FIRST READING : Is 55: 10-11
Ø The Word that goes forth from God does not return
without having accomplished its mission,
Ø Jesus, the Word made flesh speaks to us words of life,
teaches us, calls us, and for love of us abandons himself in our hands to be crushed
by
our sins.
Ø In so doing he does the will of the Father who sends
him to fulfill his saving mission: fertilize, make the seed germinate, to give
food to….
RESPONSORIAL PSALM
R. (Lk 8:8) The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
You have visited the land and watered it;
greatly have you enriched it.
God's watercourses are filled;
you have prepared the grain.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
Thus have you prepared the land: drenching its furrows,
breaking up its clods,
Softening it with showers,
blessing its yield.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
You have crowned the year with your bounty,
and your paths overflow with a rich harvest;
The untilled meadows overflow with it,
and rejoicing clothes the hills.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
The fields are garmented with flocks
and the valleys blanketed with grain.
They shout and sing for joy.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
R. (Lk 8:8) The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
You have visited the land and watered it;
greatly have you enriched it.
God's watercourses are filled;
you have prepared the grain.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
Thus have you prepared the land: drenching its furrows,
breaking up its clods,
Softening it with showers,
blessing its yield.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
You have crowned the year with your bounty,
and your paths overflow with a rich harvest;
The untilled meadows overflow with it,
and rejoicing clothes the hills.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
The fields are garmented with flocks
and the valleys blanketed with grain.
They shout and sing for joy.
R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.
The psalms may be
classified in different ways. One is according to the final doxology after some
psalms. Using this method we discover 5
books of psalms.
v The psalms were not written by King
David alone, he wrote some of them only. But since he is portrayed usually singing
the praises of God using musical instruments, the tradition considered him the
author of psalms.
v The psalms are prayerful poems. They
are the expression of the diverse feelings common to all human beings in the
diverse situations of human life.
v The church from the beginning has
organized the liturgy of the hours distributing the psalms along a
pre-established time frame. In the church many pray the psalms every day, and
it is true that sometimes we pray a psalm of sorrow and we are happy, but this
is not a contradiction.
v Why? Because we pray as a community,
as a church in the name of the whole human race and giving voice to the entire
creation. There are always human beings who weep, laugh, are born, die, are
sick, are persecuted, are abandoned….
The vocabulary of this psalm is very
beautiful and evokes the theme of the earth, of agriculture:
· The Lord waters the earth, his clouds
are filled with water which falls upon the earth
· Thus the earth is softened and allows
the seed to germinate
· And with the food that the fields
produce, the flocks multiply.
GOSPEL:
Mt 13:1-23
This parable is like the model for all
the other parables of Jesus narrated by the evangelists.
The parable
o Describes a situation or a real event,
from the daily life, a human reality with which the listeners may identify easily.
o And after narrating this which we
could call a story, Jesus makes us jump to another level of our life, the level
of the relationship with God, with the other human beings and with ourselves.
o And leaves us with the task to draw
the consequences in our own life, our response to the call that God makes to us
through the parable.
In today’s reading:
o The story is the work of a farmer and
the seed
o The farmer, the sower goes out to sow,
this is his work
o And to sow he throws the seed
abundantly in the furrows
o And the seed o seeds fall in different
places: the road, the stones, the thorns, and some in the furrows.
o According to the place the seed has
landed its life will be different: it will be trampled under feet, burned by
the heat, chocked by the thorns, will produce the grain in different measure.
Jesus ends this story saying “He who
has ears….”
The disciples want to know the meaning
and also the reason he speaks in parables.
Jesus repeats the words of Isaiah
which are difficult for us to understand because they are said according to the
Semitic mind: God does everything, makes hear and makes us deaf… But what this expression means is that if we
do not want to listen, even if we are told we will not understand.
And Jesus explains the parable:
o The seed on the road: the evil one
takes the word from us when we listen without understanding, without reflecting
on what we hear.
o The seed on the rock: sprouts very
soon but it withers after a short time. Thus the one who receives the word with
joy, with euphoria, but since it does not have roots it withers also, the
enthusiasm dies out when the hardships to follow the Word appear in our life.
o The seed among thorns: The word is
chocked in our heart by the many worldly worries and the seduction of riches.
o The seed that falls on fertile ground:
The one, who listens to the Word, understands it and gives fruit. This
understanding is the fruit of reflection and prayer, it is a responsible
understanding.
After finishing this explanation Jesus
leaves to our responsibility to understand and make fructify the good God has
put in our heart, and also in the heart of every human being.
SECOND READING : Rom 8:18-23
v Paul considers that the sufferings of the present time
cannot compare to the glory that waits for us.
v He says that creation is subjected, in some way, to
suffering and groans with birthing pain, until it will give birth to the new
creation fruit of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus.
v Then the glory of the children of God will be
revealed, glory like the glory of the Son Jesus.
CLARETIAN CORNER
I thank you
very much for the holy card of the divine law which you have sent me. I am very grateful for it because the Holy Law
is the only magnet of my love: from the moment God, Our Lord, taught me its
beauty, the object of my meditation is the harmony of its beauty, and I would
like to carry it written on my forehead to teach it to every creature. (Taken from a letter of María Antonia to St. Anthony M. Claret –
Santiago of Cuba October 31st 1857).
The second means is the
formation of the youth from both sexes, and for this I will write the booklet
you asked me for; but I cannot do it until my return from the trip of the Queen
and her family, because during the trip I have to preach every day many
sermons; some days I have preached up to 8 sermons: to the clergy, the people,
the nuns, the prisoners…. (Taken from the Letter of St. Anthony
M. Claret to María Antonia. Royal Place of St. Ildefonso, August 31st 1860).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CLARET, ST Anthony Mary – Letters
CONFERENCIA
EPISCOPAL ESPAÑOLA, Sacred Bible, official edition.
PARIS, Ma. Antonia – Letters
SCHOKEL, Luis Alonso. The Bible of
Our People (text adaptation and commentaries by)
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