23 SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME   - CYCLE  A – 2020

ü  Ezekiel has been called to be the watchman for the house of Israel. 

ü  Jesus invites us to help and love one another within our community.  

ü  Paul invites us not to owe anything to anyone except love.  

 

FIRST READING   Ez 33:7-9

v Who is  Ezekiel?  

o   The book of Ezekiel is found within the group of books called “Major Prophets.” 

o   The author  is a priest who lived in Jerusalem. 

o   And was deported to Babylon with the first group of exiles in 597 BC. 

v The book   

o   The literary composition of this book makes us think that it has been written by only one person, which is not the case in many books of the Old Testament.  

o   The emphasis is not put on the oracles or the symbolic actions that this man has to do but on the Person who gives the command to accomplish them, that is to say in God. 

o   There is a continuous presence of the Lord in these oracles, and in the life of this man. God gives him the command to do gestures and say words, and at the same time God also tells him what the reaction of the people will be.  

o   We find in the structure of this book the following elements: 

§  A vision at the beginning which gives the tone to the whole book 

§  The fall of Jerusalem, this is found at the center of the book.  

§  After that we have a series of chapters condemning and announcing the salvation for Israel.     

§  Between the announcements of condemnation and the oracles of salvation for Israel, we find other oracles related to the nations.  

§  At the conclusion of the book there is the vision of the new organization of the country and of the temple. 

v The Message

o    There are many disturbing problems, but there is a central point of interest   

§  Give hope to a national and religious community that is suffering a crisis.   

§  Which is not only the consequence of the ambition of other powerful nations 

§  But Israel has a great responsibility in all of this due to its behavior, because    

§  The destiny of the peoples is based on its own responsibility, which is translated into just or unjust behaviors in the different areas of life: religion and politics.   

LET US REFLECT ON TODAY’S READING

Ø  Son of man I have appointed you as the watchman for the house of Israel.   

Ø  When you hear me  say something, you have to repeat it 

Ø  If I say something addressed to the sinner to change his behavior and you do not repeat it to him, he will remain in his wickedness that is leading him to death, but you will be responsible of his death due to his sin. 

Ø  If I say something for the wicked to change and he does not pay attention to you, he will be responsible of the consequences of this refusal, but you will not be responsible, you will be saved.    

Ø  It seems that the prophet is trying to tell us that we are responsible of one another, that we need to care about the behavior of our brothers and sisters who journey with us in life, not to judge them, but to announce to them where salvation is found. 

Ø  If we do not do it we will be responsible that the evil continue to grow and that our brothers and sisters do not know the salvation which the Lord has brought to us

Ø  The prophet in this book wants that the people realize   the responsibility and  the consequences of our actions, especially of our response to the call of God.   

Ø  We are not called to lord over our brothers and sisters or to condemn them, but to love. This love has to be a fire inside of us which makes us realize how much we hurt ourselves, how much our brothers and sisters hurt themselves with our sins, sins that do not allow us to discover the love which God has for each one of us. 

Ø   Society, generally, invites us to be indifferent, not to worry about someone else’s life.  But, according to our faith we know that we are all mutually responsible.    

Ø  This is affirmed in different places of the Bible, let us remember the question that God asked to Cain: where is your brother Abel?  And he repeats to us today: where is your  brother, your sister?   

Ø  Do you ha we helped them to  encounter me? Have you respected them as sacred, and have you respected and cared for them as we take care of what is fragile and precious?  

Ø  When you thought you had to tell some wrongdoing you have observed, what has moved you to do so?  

Ø  Pope Francis says that the two conditions to be able to do that, is to acknowledge first that we are all sinners, and second that we are all in need of the mercy of God. 

Ø  As St. Anthony M. Claret said, each person is the image of God, of our Father, and how can I allow this image to be trampled down, dirty and destroyed by our sins?   

RESPONSORIAL PSALM:  Ps  95: 1-2. 6-7. 8-9 

IF TODAY YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS

Come let us sing joyfully to the Lord   

Let us acclaim the rock of our salvation!   

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving  

Let us joyfully sing psalms to him.    

IF TODAY YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS

Come, let us bow down in worship   

Let  us kneel before the Lord who made us  

For he is our God   

And we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.    

IF TODAY YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS

Oh, that today you would hear his voice   

“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah   

As in the day of Massah in the desert   

Where your fathers tempted me;  

They tested me though they had seen my works.”

IF TODAY YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS 

ü  This psalm is an invitation to acclaim, to sing with enthusiasm to our God because he has saved us.  

ü  Let us go with joy, enter with acclamations, bend our knees, acclaim with music… because he is our God   

ü  And we are his people, the people he guides.  

ü  The sheep of his flock, why sheep? Because in Israel the king is the shepherd, David the great king of Israel, the king who had the heart like the heart of God, had been a shepherd.   

ü  The shepherd makes us thing about a tender and continuous care for the sheep

ü  This responsorial psalm ends with the stanza which invites us to remember what had happened in the past to those who abandoned the Lord, so that we might  not repeat this situation now.   

GOSPEL  Mt 18:15-20

v In this gospel we find two themes related to the life in community, the community of the followers of Jesus.  

v The first theme: fraternal correction.    

o   All that we can do to help each other when we are destroying ourselves by our sins.  

o   To seek all the possible ways: between the two of us, with the few others, with the community…  

o   The Lord is not telling us to supervise the behavior of our brothers and sisters to be scandalized by it and so condemn them because we think that we are better than the rest

o   We are called by the Lord to live the one commandment he has given us “the new commandment”  

o   And which one is it? He said to us before his death “love one another as I have loved you” and we also know that someplace else he said “I have not come to condemn but to save.”  

o   We cannot save anyone, but we can help others to find the way which leads to the intimacy with the One who can save, which is the Lord Jesus.  

v The second theme: when two or three gather in the name of Jesus, Jesus himself is in their midst, in our gathering  

o   We gather together in the name of the Lord, this means that it is not any gathering, but one in his name.  

o   It is a gathering to pray, to ask the Lord something.  

o   The Father will give it to you   

o   Because where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them, and the Father always listens to me.  

o   Every Sunday we gather in his name, these are consoling words. How these words have the power to fill us with enthusiasm every Sunday when we come to celebrate the Eucharist.   There is so much to ask for, for the human race, for ourselves, for our brothers and sisters who journey with us toward the Father 

SECOND READING  Rm 13:8-10

v Paul invites us to love one another. This coming Sunday the theme of the second reading coincides with the other two readings.   

v Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another. 

v Because all the commandments: you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet and any other commandment  

v Are summed up in this saying “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

v Love is the fulfillment of the law     

v In what a beautiful way Paul compares the new law to the old one given by God on Mount Sinai.  

v The old law was summed up in: love God above everything else and your neighbor as yourself. 

v Jesus pronounces again this same law and invites us to love one another as He has loved us. 

v In his love Jesus is moved by his unconditional love as son toward the Father, and as brother toward each one of us; and he invites us to do the same.  

v We only have to remember, to love one another, because this entails also the love toward the Father, because without his love in us, we could not love as Jesus has loved. 

    CLARETIAN CORNER 

 María Antonia understood  progressively that the Lord wanted the renewal of the Church and, within it, of the religious life, through the road of evangelical poverty.  Even before meeting  Claret, in her Initial Experience she understood that God was calling her to a especial mission in this Renewal.  

After this experience M. Paris undergoes a normal process of an ever deeper understanding of what the Lord had revealed to her.  She understands that the Renewal is not only about the foundation of the new Order, but something larger and deeper.  It is the whole Church that has to be renewed, be converted to return to her original fervor. The situation of the Church of her time will become her burden, her deepest worry.  

In the Plan for the Renewal she will insist in the need of conversion. This conversion has to lead us, all the members of the Church,  to conform our  life to the Gospel, following the example of the first community, in poverty and fidelity for the proclamation of the Gospel.  

In Claret the idea of conversion is born from his experience of the always, always, always, of his childhood which  he applied  to others in his childhood and to him in his youth: What profit does a man have in conquering the world if he loses his soul?, until he will discover his personal vocation as an Apostolic Missionary for the Church.  He will always act from this idea of conversion. 

The two Documents have a different but convergent orientation. What in María Antonia are “Points” that call to conversion-reformation, in Claret is a Plan to accomplish the Project of conversion, which is simply what he has being doing in his Archdiocese in Cuba. (Paris and Claret Two Pens Moved by the Same Spirit.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MUÑOZ, M. Hortensia & TUTZO, Regina  Claretian Missionary Sisters

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

STOCK, Klemens. La Liturgia de la Palabra. Ciclo A (Mateo)  2007

SAGRADA BIBLIA. Official version of the  Spanish Conference of Bishops.   2010     

 

22 - SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME   - CYCLE A – 2020

ü  The prophet Jeremiah confesses that he cannot stop saying what God reveals to him, it is like a fire in his bones that impulses him to continue speaking.     

ü  Jesus says that whoever wants to follow him has to deny him or herself.   

ü  Paul invites us to offer ourselves as a living and holy sacrifice pleasing to God.

ü   The following of Jesus, our response to his call entails both joys and sufferings at the same time, but  his love and his call are so strong that we can do nothing else than  follow him and in this we find the source of our joy, in spite of the difficulties and oppositions.  

ü  Pope Francis has a reflection on this Gospel; he says that the Christian that does not follow Jesus is like the salt which has lost its taste…  

ü  And Pope Benedict XVI commented on this passage of the Gospel and said “On accepting voluntarily his death, Jesus carries the cross of every human being and thus he becomes the source of salvation for the entire human race.”  

FIRST READING   Jer 20:7-9

v This Reading is taken from the last section called “confessions of Jeremiah” which begin on chapter 20. 

v Through these chapters we find what has been called “confessions” which are texts that reveal a unique intimacy of Jeremiah with God. All these texts are especially beautiful and show to us the portrait of a man in love with God.   

v You have seduced me… these are strong words which reveal the inner struggle of a man completely in love with God and, at the same time, tired to suffer for the cause of the Word which becomes fire inside of him.   

v You were stronger than me so you overcame me; this is a very strong image which describes very well what happens when a man seduces a woman. Jeremiah says that this is what has happened to him in relation to God.    

v The complain of Jeremiah is that since that seduction he has to speak in the name of God who reveals to him the sufferings which his people will experience due to their unfaithfulness.   

v Jeremiah says that he has taken the decision neither to speak anymore in the name of God nor to listen to Him anymore.  

v But what happens?

v The Word becomes fire inside of him and he has to give it, pronounce it, utter it because he cannot resist the suffering caused by his keeping the Word for himself, he has to share it.      

v What a wonderful image of the love for the Word, of the power of seduction that the Word has.   

v Have we allowed ourselves to be seduced as Jeremiah was? Is the Word of God a fire which consumes our most inner being?  

v If this is not so yet, let us ask God, let us ask Jesus that his Word may become fire that consume us so that we may be able to put in fire of his love  the whole world.  

 RESPONSORIAL PSALM  Ps  63: 2,  3-4,  5-6, 8-9.

MY SOUL IS THIRSTING FOR YOU, O LORD MY GOD

O God you are my God whom I seek

For you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts

Like the earth, parched lifeless and without water

MY SOUL IS THIRSTING FOR YOU, O LORD MY GOD

So have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary

To see your power and your glory

For your kindness is a greater good than life

My lips shall glorify you.

MY SOUL IS THIRSTING FOR YOU, O LORD MY GOD

Thus will I bless you while I live

Lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name

As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied

And with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.

MY SOUL IS THIRSTING FOR YOU, O LORD MY GOD

You are my help,

And in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy

My soul clings fast to you

Your right hand upholds me.

MY SOUL IS THIRSTING FOR YOU, O LORD MY GOD 

ü  This psalm shows an intimacy similar to the first Reading. 

ü  You are my God, I seek you, I adhere myself to you, I raise my hands to you...    

ü  God is everything for the psalmist who says his longing for God, his attraction towards God.

ü  Do we long, like the psalmist, for the God who lives in us?  

GOSPEL Mt 16:21-27

v After Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Messiah” which we read last Sunday, Jesus begins to teach the apostles what does it mean that he is the Christ. 

v To be the Christ, the faithfulness to his mission will entail sufferings for Jesus, persecution, humiliation and death.      

v But death will not be the end, because he will rise again on the third day.   

v What does it mean that he will rise again? What does he want to tell us? We do not understand…   

v Peter, the man who is the closest friend of Jesus, whom he loves with his entire being, Peter always impulsive speaks again, but now he does not repeat the words which the Father has told him, but his own words.   

v God  forbid, Lord! How can this be true? It is impossible, you are the Christ, do you not remember? And the Christ cannot neither suffer, nor be defeated.    

v Peter you think as a man, Jesus is inviting them, inviting all of us, to see the events of our life, of history with the eyes of the Father who knows what is good for us.     

v The answer of Jesus is harsh “go behind me Satan” what did Peter feel when he heard these words of Jesus calling him the tempter, the seducer.    

v Did Peter with his words have the power to be a temptation for Jesus? This is a mystery which goes beyond our understanding

v Maybe Jesus was experiencing something similar to what Jeremiah experienced?  I will not speak any more about you, but I could not, your word is fire inside of me. Maybe the words of Peter were echo of the temptation in the desert: you can be a Messiah in an easier way and at the same time more effective, you will see how everyone follow  you… transform the stones into bread… throw yourself down from the Temple… kneel before me

v Why does Jesus say to Peter “get behind me” which has the same meaning as go after me? Because who goes first is the teacher, the disciple follows the teacher.     

v And Jesus  teaches them a lesson, the great revelation  

o   Whoever wants to come after  me, get behind me   

§  Must deny himself or herself

§  Take his or her cross, his or her own life

o   And come after me, why?

§  For whoever wishes to save  his or her life will lose it

§  But whoever loses his or her life for my sake will find it.

§  What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his or her life

§  O what can one give in exchange for his life?

v This Gospel puts in front of us the fundamental question of our life, the following of Jesus we have been called to, even before we had been conceived, and which has become visible and public at our baptism. 

v In our baptism we were submerged into the death and resurrection of Jesus to be other Christs, and thus continue in the world his mission to seek the brothers and sisters who has gone astray and those who do not know him yet. .   

v The Gospel ends with these words of Jesus: the Son of Man will come at the end of time, he will not come in poverty and humility as in the first coming, but he will come in the glory of the Father, which is also his glory, and he will give to each one what is due.   

v Come Lord Jesus and you who are the way, walk with us so that when you come at the end of times, you will say to us the so long expected words “come you blessed from my Father, because you loved me in each one of your brothers and sisters in need who you met on the journey of your life.”      

SECOND READING  Rom 12:1-2

     Paul exhorts us to offer ourselves, our bodies, our own being to God as an acceptable and holy offering. 

     In the day of our baptism we were anointed “priest, prophet and king.” Our priestly being enables us to offer sacrifices to God, and our sacrifice is our own life “your bodies”

     What a consolation and what an enthusiasm these words awaken in us, knowing that our life, simple, sometimes broken, hidden from the eyes of the great public, this my life can be an offering pleasing to God, if I offer it with simplicity and humility.     

     My life becomes then a worship of adoration to God. 

     Yes, my life as a husband or as a wife, as son or daughter, as an older person or as a young person, as a child… My life has the possibility to be an offering, a sacrifice of adoration to my God.    

     Paul continues and invites us not to conform our mind to the mind of the word of sin, the world that lives far from God and from the good of others.  

     Let us allow the Lord to transform ourselves, by the renewal of our mind, our way to look at life, allow the Spirit of Jesus to enkindle in us the fire of the Spirit, so that we may know what is good and pleasing to God our Father, to Jesus our brother and to the Spirit, our teacher.   

 CLARETIAN CORNER 

After we reached the port in less than an hour, the entire city knew already the news that “Rosalia” had entered. Everybody considered it lost by fatal information spread everywhere. (I do not know how it could be known because, since the day when the water started to enter, God our Lord who made himself our helper did not permit us to meet any other ship so that nobody could get us out of the peril but his omnipotent hand). Then, it was said that some of the passengers were nuns, and God moved a very devout lady to pity so intensely that in that very moment sent her husband to offer us their whole house and personnel. Being unable to disembark in this port because of the storm, this good gentleman sent a recommendation letter through boats, which look like a horse over the foams of that stormy sea (it also brought provision of foods) this letter was address to a friend of his Lanzarote – where it was so suppose d would land and he told him to do for us all what he would do for his own family. This friend fulfilled it so delicately that it was necessary to put an end to his excesses.  Venerable Maria Antonia Paris, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, 153

 I remained in the capital, where I inaugurated the pastoral visitation, starting in the cathedral and then going through the parishes.  Every day administered the Sacrament of Confirmation. There were a great many to be confirmed, and so, to avoid confusion, I had some forms printed and distributed the right quantity of them to the rectories the day before confirmations. These forms were then filled in with such data as the names of those to be confirmed, their parents, and their sponsors. This helped avoid confusion and crowding and made it easier to record the data later with greater accuracy and leisure. I always followed this procedure, and it worked quite well with all those I confirmed – and that came to no less than 300,000 persons during my stay of six years and two months on the island.

Beside the visitation and confirmations, I preached on all Sundays and holy days of obligation. I never failed to preach, no matter what part of the diocese I happened to be in at the time.  Toward the beginning of June I left the city and went to Caney, to conclude the mission that Father Stephen and Father Curríus had started and were very successfully carrying on. After confirming everyone, I preached the closing service of the mission. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 515-516

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

CLARET, Antonio María Claret, Autobiografía.

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

PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiografía

STOCK, Klemens. La Liturgia de la Palabra. Ciclo A (Mateo)  2007

LA BIBLIA, traducción tomada de la página web del Vaticano.

LA BIBLIA DE NUESTRO PUEBLO. Texto de Luis Alonso Schökel.