XXV SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME     - A - 2020

ü  During the last two weeks the Gospel for the Mass was taken from chapter 18 of Matthew, chapter called “gospel of the community,”   because it says how our behavior has to be if we want that Jesus be in the midst of the community: correct each other with love, pray together and forgive each other seventy times seven, always.  

ü  Today the parable that Jesus tells us is another invitation to love selflessly like the Father, represented in the owner of the vineyard. This is a wider love that goes beyond our community, beyond our “boundaries,” it embraces persons until now unknown for us.  

FIRST READING   Is 55:6-9

o   Today’s Reading is taken from the Second Isaiah called also Deutero-Isaiah and Book of Consolation. 

o   It is of an exceptional beauty whose words give comfort to the heart.   

o   Seek the Lord while you may find him, while he allows himself to be found.  

o   This is an image of a father or a mother who plays with her young child; image also of the lover who seeks his or her love, and also allows the loved one to find him or her.    

o   After that there is an invitation to abandon evil, to change, to go back to the Lord who is generous in forgiveness.    

o   And here the prophet, the voice of God, says words that he has heard from God: my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are high above your ways. 

o   My thoughts are generous no mean like yours.  

o   The Lord is all mercy, forgiveness, compassion and tender love. 

o   His thoughts do not judge us negatively, but only to save us. On the contrary we judge others to condemn with our tongue without mercy in our heart and,  without even realizing who we really are.   

 RESPONSORIAL PSALM  Ps 145:2-3; 8-9;17-18 

THE LORD IS NEAR TO ALL WHO CALL UPON HIM

Every day will I bless you    

And I will praise your name forever and ever

Great is the Lord and highly to be praised

His greatness is unsearchable.

THE LORD IS NEAR TO ALL WHO CALL UPON HIM 

The Lord is gracious and merciful

Sallow to anger and of great kindness

The Lord is good to all

And compassionate toward all his works

THE LORD IS NEAR TO ALL WHO CALL UPON HIM 

The Lord is just in all his ways

And holy in all his works

The Lord is near to all who call upon him

To all who call upon him in truth

THE LORD IS NEAR TO ALL WHO CALL UPON HIM 

     This psalm sings the goodness of God

     It is a fitting prayer response to the text of Isaiah where the prophet says how good is God toward all.    

     Do we not feel the desire to be like him?   

     So that with him we may work to transform this world of ours, and also our communities filling them with love and compassion. 

     Thus having a society in which we all can live, no matter what is our condition: having talents or not having them; having a doctorate or having gone to school only to the first grades… We are all loved by God, let us allow Him to enkindle in our heart his flame of love toward everyone. Let us pray insistently without getting weary, He listens to us.    

GOSPEL  Mt 20:1-16a

Ø  Chapter 19 ends with the sentence “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” 

Ø  At the beginning of chapter 20 Matthew tells us this parable that Jesus told about the owner of the vineyard.  

Ø  This parable tells us what the kingdom of God is all about.  

Ø  It is like a land owner who has a vineyard and needs workers who can work in it, who will be willing to pick up the grapes that probably are  ready.  

Ø  This image of men waiting for someone to give them work,  was something that Jesus had seen many times .  

Ø  Still today in many places people who need to work and people who need workers meet at certain points of the towns .     

Ø  According to the parable the owner goes out very early in the morning, and then many more times until 5 in the afternoon and to all he says the same I will pay you what is just.   

Ø  He continues to go out, but the Lord does not tell us if this is because he needs so many workers or because he wants to give work to everyone.  

Ø  No one has hired you? No one. Go to my vineyard and I will pay what is just.    

Ø  All go, some work all day long, some work some hours and the last work only one hour.  

Ø  The great surprise comes at the end, when the owner says to his steward, start paying the last first and continue until you have paid all. Give to each one the usual daily wage.  

Ø  What is this!  What an injustice! Some have worked more than 12 hours and the last only one hour… 

Ø  My friend, if I want to be good, am I not free to give to this one the same as to you? I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?   

Ø  Why is this way of retribution just?    

o   This is what they had agreed   

o   But if we now look at our life, at our relationship with the Lord, what is this parable telling us?

§  The call, the mission and the recompense in the eternal life is complete gratuitous and it depends only on the loving will of God.  

§  God loves us all equally; he creates all and redeems us all with the same love.   

§  I say creates and redeems because creation and redemption are ongoing realities.   

§  The reward, the wage is God himself, and God cannot be divided in different parts, the salary is such that it is only one which is eternal life.

§   The extra salary or reward for those who have worked all day long is the possibility to work a longer time, happy and blessed those who have been able to work for the Lord since their childhood.  

§  The salary does not depend on us, because we are not entitled to any reward, but it depends on the loving disposition of our God.   

§  When you have done all you had to do, say we are useless servants, and we have done only what we were supposed to do.  

§  Do you think that the owner of the house will praise the servant who has done what he was told to do?   

o   For me this is the most interesting parable among the parables that the Lord has told us. Our human categories, our human justice, our own calculations are excluded in the parable.     

o   My thoughts and my ways are far from yours. I think and act in a very different way than you, but you need to learn from me.    

SECOND READING    Phil  1:20c-24,27a

Ø  The community of Philippi was the most cherished community by Paul, and Paul was loved very much by the community.   

Ø  This letter belongs to the group of letters called “captivity letters” because they were written in prison.    

Ø  Paul was in prison twice thus it is difficult to date this letter. The date will be between the years 50-60.    

Ø  It is a short letter, filled with love. It is addressed to the first community that Paul evangelized; maybe this can explain his preference for them.  

Ø  The contents:

o   A theological jewel: the Christological Hymn  

o   Some autobiographical notes   

o   The church organization:  bishops and deacons   

o   The teaching of Paul about the encounter of the believer with Christ after death.    

o   The financial cooperation of this community to help Paul. 

Let us see the contents of today’s Reading

v Christ will be glorified either by my life or by my death   

v Because my life is Christ, and I consider death as gain

v Paul does not know what to choose, to continue to live in this world to serve the community, or to die and go with the Lord forever. He says that his heart is divided between these two wishes.  

v O that our love be like his! and we might experience too this inner struggle, between being with the Lord in heaven or remaining here  with our brothers and sisters to serve them.   

v Today’s reading ends with an exhortation to behave in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ. 

v  This invitation is not only to the community of Philippi, but also to us, to our community.  

CLARETIAN CORNER  

Love and communion with the Church, the spouse of Christ,  are profoundly rooted in our Congregation of Religious of Mary Immaculate Claretian Missionary Sisters. We show it in many different ways, above all being aware that we are sent by the Church to proclaim the Gospel.

 Our love for the Church, to which we belong, has to be critical and prophetic, as was the love of Claret  and Paris  for the Church of their own time.  Both uncovered and denounced the evils that the Church was experiencing in the concrete persons of the Bishops, Clergy, Religious men and women and Laity. 

The prophetic dimension, which is a characteristic of the religious life in general, has for us a especial nuance: to feel the burden of the Church as María Antonia felt it, to analyze in truth the reality and to discover what does not coincide with the Gospel in order to work unceasingly to bring the Holy Law of the Lord to all creatures and thus cooperate in the permanent renewal of the Church.  Like Claret, we have to work so that “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be known and loved by all men.”   In that journey we commit ourselves completely to the service of the Church; going to the places which we recognize are most in need of evangelization. (Paris and Claret…. Beginning of chapter 4.)  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MUÑOZ, Ma. Hortensia and TUTZO, Regina, Claretian Missionary Sisters. Paris and Claret, Two Pens Guided by the same Spirit. Called to Renew the Church. 2010.

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

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

SAGRADA BIBLIA. Versión oficial de la Conferencia Episcopal Española.