27 SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – CYCLE C – 2022 

The theme of the celebration seems to be “faith”   

Ø  Faith so full of trust that allows us to  present to  God our complains and supplications   

Ø  Faith so strong as the strength needed to uproot a strong tree    

Ø  Faith so full of novelty as it would be to plant a tree in the sea  

Ø  Faith so simple that discovers the presence of the God that is behind all reality.  

BOOK OF THE  PROPHET  HABAKKUK

Ø  The name of this prophet is unique in the Bible, it might come from the name of a plant “basil” 

Ø  We  know neither his origin, nor his family, nor his hometown

Ø  The three chapter of this book are difficult to understand. 

Ø  The content is a proclamation received during a vision  

Ø  The prophet does not understand, he suffers for the social situation of his people and asks God for an explanation 

Ø  The time of its composition is between   606 a.C  and the Babylonian exile 587 a.C

Ø  The message seems to be, we must abandon the traditional way to understand the retribution from God.  We must understand the intervention of God in our human history in a different way. 

FIRST READING  Habakkuk 1:2-3;2:2-4

ü  The prophet complains because he asks help from God, and it seems that God does not listen 

ü  Why do I have to see violence and destruction?   

ü  The answer from God is to tell the prophet to write the vision  

ü  “If it delays, wait for it, because it will certainly come, without delay.”

ü  We have this same reading in the Liturgy of the Hours one of the days of Advent.  

ü  The reading ends saying “the just will live by his faith” 

ü  To know that He will certainly come, fills our heart with hope and enkindles in it the fire of love. 

ü  In addition, certainly, the Lord has come, and He continues to come into our life and He is present in our history; sometimes we complain, like the prophet, because we do not realize that He is already here.    

Salmo 95, 1-2. 6-7. 8-9

 R.  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.
R. 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.
R. 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.”
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. 

v  The psalmist invites us  

o   To praise God and sing to the Lord, our Rock

o   To adore God, we are his flock, he is our shepherd

o   To listen to God, to open our hearts to his voice    

 

GOSPEL  Lk 17:5-10

Ø    This Reading has two parts.   

Ø  In the first part the Apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith   

Ø  Maybe when they heard the mission that Jesus wanted to entrust to them, they realized that the traditional faith, still childlike, would not help them. 

Ø  Thus, their petition, sometimes we do the same petition to the Lord. 

Ø  It does not mean that we do not have faith, but that our faith is still the faith of the First Communion Catechesis, or the faith taught to us by our grand-mother, but that we have not made it our own yet, thus, it does not help us. 

Ø  Jesus gives them a surprising answer, that we do not have to take it literally but try to understand the deep meaning of this answer for our faith and our life.  

Ø  It seems that with this comparison He wants to tell them that they need:  

o   A faith as strong as the strength needed to uproot a mulberry tree, a strong tree, difficult to uproot  

o   A faith able to accept and propose the novelty, as it would be a novelty to plant a tree in the sea. 

Ø  I copy below a fragment from a book of José Antonio Pagola, it has helped me a lot, and I want to share it with you. (it is my own translation from Spanish)  

The theologian  Karl Rahner said, this “abandonment” proper of faith is the “maximum audacity of man.”  A tiny particle of the cosmos (universe) dares to enter into a relationship with the “incomprehensible and foundational wholeness of the universe,”   and it does it, trusting absolutely in His power and in His love. As Christians we have to be more aware of the audacity of daring  to trust in the mystery of God. 

The original message of Jesus is precisely, to invite the human being to trust unconditionally in the unfathomable Mystery, which is at the origin of everything.    This is what we hear in his proclamation “do not fear… trust in God…. call Him Abbá, loving Father. He takes care  of you. Even the hairs of your head are counted. Have faith in God.”  (PAGOLA, José Antonio. El camino Abierto por Jesús – 3 Lucas, p. 261. 2012)

 

 

SECOND READING  2Tm 1,6-8;13-14

ü  Rekindle the gifts you received with the imposition of my hands. Return to your first love. Let all of us return to our first love, the first time we open our life to welcome the Lord.  

ü  God does not want us to be cowards but daring, motivated by love and not by fear 

ü  Do not be ashamed to witness to Jesus.  Let us not be ashamed to profess our faith by our life, by the way we live.  

ü  Carry the hard work allotted to you.  What work?  The proclamation of the Gospel with words and  deeds. 

ü  Keep the treasure, which is in you, and in all of us, with the help of the Holy Spirit.  

ü  What treasure? The faith we have received at our Baptism, and which we need to make it grow, with the friendship and intimacy with Jesus in our prayer and in our life. 

 CLARETIAN CORNER 

3.2.    A New Religious Order...”

 

-          Although it may seem so at first sight, the mission entrusted to her does not consist in a concrete work. It is true that, in both the Old and New Testaments, the task entrusted to the one called is sometimes a very concrete thing; vr. gr. Gideon’s war against the Midianites, although it also has a salvific impact on the whole People of Israel (Jc.7). But in the case of the Mother Foundress the mission that God entrusts to her from the first moment has a totalizing, universalizing dimension. She is entrusted with the mission of founding a "new Religious Order;”  but  not new     in doctrine but in practice" (Aut. 7). However, this "new Order" must be a paradigm or model of a universal situation of salvation for the Church:

... Our Lord deigned to teach me with great pleasure the manner in which He wanted to be served by this ungrateful creature; and it was in this way that He laid before me, the keeping of His Most Holy Law and Evangelical Counsels, and told me He wanted me to keep them with all perfection (Aut.3).

It is not a concrete work but a universal salvific mission; for "to keep the Most Holy Law and Evangelical Counsels" is to put the Church in a universal salvific situation, because, in fact, the reality of the Church at that time was not adapted to the demands of the Gospel:

...and he told me with great sorrow that he had no one in his House to keep them, so much that all the Religious Orders had degenerated in the guard of his holy laws and that therefore he allowed their destruction with great pain (Aut. 3).

Therefore, the task entrusted to her is not to innovate anything in the Religious Life, but to return to the exact fulfillment of the Most Holy Law of God and the Evangelical Counsels. The "new Order", "new not in doctrine but in practice" is oriented to this. In practice, in a twofold direction:

- Realizing in the Order itself the exact fulfillment of the Most Holy Law of the Lord and Evangelical Counsels   in qll its perfection (Aim and Goal)   

-          - Teaching  the Law of God and Evangelical Counsels, "seeking the conversion of the whole world"; and "the sanctification of all persons consecrated to the service of God" (Aim and Goal) 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALVAREZ GOMEZ, Jesús, cmf.  Visión Inicial. 1991

PARIS, María Antonia. Autobiografía en Escritos Introducciones y comentarios por Juan Manuel Lozano,  

PAGOLA, José Antonio. El camino Abierto por Jesús – 3 Lucas, p. 261. 2012

                                                                                                                                                      

 

 

  

 

26 SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME  - C - 2022

·          Amos keeps inviting us to live in justice and compassion towards our sisters and brothers less fortunate. 

·         We will listen to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. This parable like the words of Amos urge us to take seriously the matter of justice in our relationships. 

·         The author of the letter to Timothy   tells him how to behave as a follower of Jesus

 

FIRTS READING  Amos  6:1a. 4-7

ü  This reading is taken from the "woes' section" called also "lamentations"  in chapter 5 and 6. 

ü  The reading gives us the third woe. 

ü   If we did not know that we are reading something related to many centuries ago, we would think that the prophet is speaking of our own time and society. 

ü  Amos tells the powerful, the rich men that they live in the opulence and that they are not sensitive to the suffering of those who lack almost everything. 

ü  He gives a very vivid description: they participate in banquets, they sing, they dance... in a word they do nothing useful, only enjoying themselves. 

ü  They take advantage of those who lack almost everything, and they, the rich, take from them the little they have, or they do not give to them their salary. 

ü  The consequences of this empty and selfish life will be great. When the Assyrians come, they will be the first to be deported. This was the policy of the Assyrians, to take the powerful from their own nation, so that they could not organize a revolt. However, they were leaving the poor of the land to care for it. 

ü  It is not difficult to see something similar in our society today.   We are continually invited to spend the little we have in futile things for the profit of the business owners.   We are offered continually "sales" or "two for the price of one," or they make us believe that "we can buy without paying now and without interest..." 

ü  In a word, they play with our sinful inclination to possess more and more without effort, to spent money without thinking....  

ü  However, I do not think that we have to look only to the world of opulence, of the businesses etc... the readings invites all of us to look at our own life and see if there is something in it similar  to what the prophet describes. 

ü  The great sin of all those Amos is describing in his oracle, and also of the rich man of the parable of Luke is the "indifference" in front of the suffering and the need of whole countries, whole continents… that are deprived almost of everything for their lives.   

RESPONSORIAL  PSALM . Ps 146  7,8-9,9-10     

R.  Praise the Lord, my soul!
 Blessed he who keeps faith forever,
secures justice for the oppressed,
gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets captives free.
R. Praise the Lord, my soul!
 The LORD gives sight to the blind.
The LORD raises up those who were bowed down;
the LORD loves the just.
The LORD protects strangers.
R. Praise the Lord, my soul!
The fatherless and the widow he sustains,
but the way of the wicked he thwarts.
The LORD shall reign forever;
your God, O Zion, through all generations. Alleluia.
R. Praise the Lord, my soul!

ü  This psalm sings the good works the Lord God does for us

§  The Lord gives sight to the blind

§  Raises those who are bowed down

§  He gives food to the hungry

§  He sets captives free.  

ü  The Lord liberates us from all that harm and destroy us. 

GOSPEL  Lk 16: 19-31

      Before we begin to analyze this parable, let us look at what comes before it in chapter 16 of the Gospel of Luke. 

      The reason to do so is that the Gospels have an inner order through which the author wants to help us to understand the message. 

      Chapter 16 of Luke begins with the parable of the "dishonest steward” then comes the words addressed to the Pharisees, who loved money and power.   

      In a word, we may say that this is a chapter on the need to use money justly. 

      Let us see now the parable 

§  It is a story we know very well, the story of two human beings  

§  One is rich but does not have a name, his life is empty, and Luke says that not giving him a name.  

§  The other man has a name in spite of being a "nobody" for the rich man who does not even see him. He only realizes that Lazarus exists when he needs him, when he wants to use him for his convenience.  

§  This man is called Lazarus = Eliezer which means, "God helps", what a beautiful name the name of this beggar, and certainly God helps.      

§  The sin of the rich man is not that he abuses the poor man or takes advantage of him, not even a sin of "social injustice", but a sin of "indifference"  He does not see the poor man, he does not feel his needs, he is totally indifferent.   

§  The human beings do not help the poor man full of sores, but the dogs, those dogs that are as homeless as he is, take care of his wounds.

§  These two men die as everybody does. None of us takes anything when we die neither the riches, nor the sores... nothing. In that moment, we are all equals, simple human beings poor and naked before our Creator and Father.

§  I have heard yesterday something very interesting in this respect in relation to the funeral and burial of Queen Elisabeth of England recently deceased. There was an ancient tradition, which they do not do anymore: when the coffin of the monarch arrived at the door of the cathedral that were locked, one of the bearers would knock and from the inside someone will ask “who are you?”   He will answer Elisabeth queen for so many years, serving so many countries. The answer was “I do not know you.”

A second time the same question “who are you” and the answer was Elisabet daughter of king so and so, wife of … queen of England and of…. “ I do not know you.”

A third time the question was “who are you?” the answer was I am Elisabet daughter of God. “Come in I know you”.

This is a tradition that illustrates what we have said, when we die, we are all equal, naked, poor, defenseless, loved and welcomed by our Father God. I think that this welcome of God who covers our nakedness can be symbolized by the white clothe with which the priest covers the coffin.

§  The fate these two men changes immediately: the rich man is buried, why do they tell us something that is so normal to be buried? Because he is buried in the abyss of the dead, he is forgotten forever, nobody remembers him. 

§  The poor man is taken to the bosom of Abraham, which is the image of peace and consolation reserved for those who die in the Lord, who will enjoy happiness for all eternity. 

§  The reaction of the rich man, as Luke describes it, is very interesting. On one side, he is as selfish as always "tell Lazarus to come to alleviate my suffering..." on the other side, he is able to act moved by love for his brothers.   

§  The words of Abraham make us think. "Between you and us there is a great chasm that nobody can cross." 

§  Maybe this is the best description of what happens between selfishness and unconditional love. 

§  This parable does not need more explanation, let us enter into our heart and let us see in it how much of the rich man we have and how much of the poor. From there let us make our own reflection.   

SECOND READING  1 Tm 6:11-16

v  The author of the letter continues to tell Timothy how to behave as a man of God called to the pastoral ministry. 

v  He invites Timothy to live according to the commandments and, to exhort him to do it he reminds him that Jesus gave witness in front of Pilate. 

v  We know that because of this witnessing, he died, but his death was redeeming us.  

v  It is an invitation to Timothy to live a good life. 

v  Until Christ, the Lord of Lords comes again.  

v  His, is the honor and glory.

CLARETIAN CORNER

The Mother Foundress has a personal knowledge of the needs of a particular Church, the Spanish One; but God Our Lord raises her to the knowledge of the needs of the universal Church: 

Here he put all the Religious Orders before me again and made me see the deplorable state of the whole universal Church... (Aut. 88). 

Now, God has not called Mother Marie Antonia Paris to entrust her with a message destined only to others ("go and tell them"), but a message that is first directed to herself; and then to other people who must continue their own task or mission. 

She begins by adopting a new attitude before  God who manifests himself to her: it is an attitude of unconditional readiness to accept and fulfill the task that God entrusts to her. It is not the attitude of the prophet to whom he says, "Go and tell them"; and consequently, despite the difficulties, he will convey the oracle of the Lord; but the attitude of the one who says, "What do you want me to do" "Here I am". She is "available" to fulfill the mission entrusted to her, at any price, even at the cost of her own life 

I offered my life to him in sacrifice as I had done before (Aut. 2) 

3.2.2  The objections 

Before the mission that God entrusts him, the chosen one experiences himself as absolutely incapable of carrying it out: he sees a contradiction between what he is and the specificity of the mission: "I am a stutterer"; "I am the smallest of my family "; "I am of impure lips"But in reality it is not a real objection or rejection of the mission received from God, but rather information, that the one who is called feels his unability to fulfill the mission. It is not a real objection or rejection.

In the case of the Maria Antonia, the objection is, in effect,  information about her personal limitations. She declares herself absolutely available, but sees herself incapable of carrying out the mission that God has entrusted to her:: 

...well persuaded that my life was of no value to satisfy so many evils ; but as I had no virtues in me to offer him, I begged him to deign to teach me what to do to give him pleasure and glory fulfilling his most holy will (Aut.3).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALVAREZ GOMEZ, Jesús, cmf. LA VISION INICIAL.  

CHAMBERLAND, Yves. “Lazare ne viendra pas”en la Revista Prions en Église, Septiembre 2019. 

JENSEN, Joseph. Ethical Dimension of the Prophets. Collegeville, Minnesota  2006. 

PAGOLA, José A.  Following in the Footsteps of Jesus. Meditations on the Gospels for Year C.   

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según las Escrituras, Año C.

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso, Comentario a La Biblia de nuestro Pueblo

 

24 SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME  – C – 2022

ü   A glance at the first reading and at the Gospel will reveal who God is and who we are.

ü  In the first reading through a situation of the people of the exodus the author reveals the goodness, patience, and tenderness of God.

ü  In the Gospel, Luke the evangelist narrates three parables which traditionally we call the parables of mercy. Through them we discover another facet of our Father God, the joy to find what was lost and to receive the son who comes back.

FIRST READING  Ex 32:7-11,13-14

Ø  If we go back to chapter 24, we will read that the Lord calls Moses to give to him the commandments which he had already explained on chapter 20.  

Ø  Now he is about to ratify his covenant with the people that accepted to be his people 

Ø  However, as it is usual among us, human beings, we forget what we have promised in a moment of enthusiasm. 

Ø  The people get tired to wait for Moses to come down, and they decide to make their own God, which they will be able to manipulate.  

Ø  God gets angry and decides to destroy this people, not to journey with it anymore. 

Ø  Now something interesting happens, a conversation between Moses and God in favor of the people.  

Ø  Like before, in the time of Abraham, when he had a conversation with God about the sinner cities, which God was about to destroy. 

Ø  Moses reminds God how; he himself saved the people and made of them his own people. Now is he going to destroy it?  

Ø  He asks God to remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel to whom he promised that their offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and, the sands of the seashore. 

Ø  And, now are you going to destroy the people without keeping your promise? 

Ø  And God changes his decision, like in the case of Abraham God was ready to spare the city if he could find 10 just men instead of 50 as was Abraham’s first deal. 

Ø  I find very interesting this way to portray God, he is not the immutable God of the Greeks and of the philosophers, he is not either the God who decides and does not listen to, because he knows everything. 

Ø  On the contrary it seems to me that he is the God who accepts and listens to the words of his friends. 

Ø  Do we  not believe this to be true, if not why do we pray for the cure of a sick loved one, that our kids  do good in school, that we may find a better job, a house to buy, etc…  

Ø  Let us remember   Jesus’ parables on prayer.  

During this week I think it would be good to ask ourselves, what is my golden calf?  Not the golden calf of our society, this is very easy to point it out, because we do not feel that we are part of this negative aspect of our society. But let us take this question into our life, and with sincerity let us ask the Lord that his light illumines our inner darkness, and thus we might be able to discover our golden calf, that we keep saved and protected so that we will not have to destroy it.   

Responsorial Psalm  Sal 50: 3-4, 12-13, 17 y 19

R.   I will rise and go to my father.
Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness;
in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense.
Thoroughly wash me from my guilt
and of my sin cleanse me.
R. I will rise and go to my father.
A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
R. I will rise and go to my father.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.
R. I will rise and go to my father.

·          If we read verses 1 and 2 we will know that this psalm was written by David when the prophet Nathan denounced his sin of adultery because he united himself to the wife of Uriah one of his generals, whom he had killed to cover his sin

·         We perceive a great sense of humility and sorrow in front of the magnitude of his sins and because he has been ungrateful to all the benefits God has given him.

·         The church prays each Friday this psalm in the office of Lauds. As the people of the new covenant, as the people redeemed we also need to ask for forgiveness over and over again.

·         David asks God to create in  him a pure heart, a heart open to the grace of God and closed to the spirit of evil.

·         In this psalm we ask God to open our lips and our mouth shall declare his praises. 

GOSPEL  LUKE 15:1-32

v  The commentary will be on the last parable 

v  We all know this beautiful story which touches our heart, because we feel like the younger son who wants to come back home, and we also want to return home. 

v  But I would like to direct our meditation in a different direction, following something I have read, and I think can be very useful for all of us. 

v  There are two sons, let us look first at the younger one, the one who left home 

o   He asks from his father something, which does not belong to him, and his father allows him to choose his way, in spite that his heart is broken when he sees him leave.   

o   Since that money did not cost him any sacrifice or effort, he spends it without any consideration. He has friends while the money is there.  

o   He looks for a job, and accepts one which is humiliating for a Jew, so low has he fallen: to take care and feed pigs.  

o   Hunger, loneliness, low self-esteem, everything comes together for this young man to touch bottom. Then he remembers his father, and finds the energy to go back.

o   “I will go back… I will say… I am not worthy… receive me as…

v  The other son, the eldest 

o   He is a “wise” and hardworking man, but has allowed his heart to harden, so much is the hate he feels for the way his brother behaves.  

o   He obeys and serves, not willingly and lovingly, but only because it is his duty; and this is what he has to do to be an honorable man. 

o   He is incapable to forgive his brother, neither to rejoice because his father is happy now; this causes more resentment in his heart.   

o   You have never given me… all the time I have served…  

v  None of these sons has known who their father is  

o   Maybe the youngest knows him better, at least he knows that he will be in some way accepted 

o   The eldest who has always been at home close to his father has been unable to know him nor to be happy with his father, he has lived everything as a burden. 

o   The paradox is that the one who started off badly ends well; on the contrary the one who began well, on seeing how everything ends,  we discover that he was never well

v  But what happens with the father. I am going to transcribe some thoughts  from Jose Antonio Pagola, which I find very interesting, and I prefer that you read them directly yourselves instead of giving my interpretation.  

o   More and more the contemporary interpreters of the Bible have open a new way to read this parable… to discover in it the tragedy of a father that, in spite of his “incredible love” for his  sons, he cannot build a united family. That would be, according to Jesus, the tragedy of God.   

o   The father (who went out to meet his younger son) goes now to meet his eldest and reveals to him the most deep desire of his heart: to see his children sitting at the same table, friendly sharing a festive banquet, in spite of  any confrontation, hate and condemnations.   

o   Peoples   in war to each other, blind terrorisms, lack of solidarity by political groups, religions with a harden heart, countries plunged in hunger… We will never share the earth in a dignified and happy way, if we do not look at each other with the compassionate love of God. 

o   This fresh look, is the most important thing that as followers of Jesus, we can introduce today in our world.  

v  I think that these paragraphs do not need any explanation, and also they can help us to look at the parable with new eyes, new ears and new heart. 

SECOND READING   1 Tm 1:12-17 

      Paul is grateful because the Lord has considered him faithful and has entrusted to him the ministry 

      This generosity of the Lord reminds to Paul his previous condition of persecutor. 

      This thought never abandoned Paul, I imagine that this helped him very much to be humble in the midst of all the gifts and graces he had received.

       He acknowledges, however, that all that he did was caused by ignorance.  

      Grace, faith and Jesus Christ love had been abundant in Paul. 

      Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and Paul says that he knows that this is true.

      He ends this fragment of his letter with a praise to Christ Jesus, King of the ages.  

CLARETIAN CORNER – The Initial Vision or Experience (continued)

2.1 Perception of the Divine

The manifestation of God can be "materialized" in very different ways, vr.gr. "The angel of the Lord" or "The burning bush"; but it is always a sensitive and direct perception of the Divine. We say "sensitive", but not necessarily through the materiality of the senses, eyes or ears, but as something "real", "experiential", not "imaginary". The manifestation always consists of two essential elements: vision and hearing.

The vision: 

Here I saw Our Lord Jesus Christ,  with so much sorrow for the evils of the Church, that it seemed as if tears were springing from his eyes …(Autobiography M. Paris 9).

The audition:

... and he said to me: "Look, my child, if I could renew the spirit of my Church with tears, I would weep them with living blood"... (Aut. 9). 

hearing:  

…and it was this way to lay before me the guard of his Most Holy Law and Evangelical Counsels,  (Aut. 3).

And in a much more direct way in this other passage of the description of the "Initial Vision":

   This vision was imprinted in my heart, and all the words that Christ our Lord said so present, that now    that I write them, which have already passed more than fourteen years, it seems to me that I am hearing Our Lord Jesus Christ in the same way…  (Aut. 10)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALVAREZ GÓMEZ, Jesús, cmf. “La Vision inicial”. 

PAGOLA, José A.sj.  Following in the Footsteps of Jesus. Meditations on the Gospels for Year C.  

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según las Escrituras, Año C.

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso, Comentario a La Biblia de nuestro Pueblo.