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.
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.
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