33^RD  SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME  - C - 2022

• Today's theme speaks of the end, this same theme will be taken again during Advent.  
• An end that invites us to what is new; in nature, in our life every end implies a new beginning, a new horizon, a new life. Very often we do not see it and thus we do not like it, we are scared.
• This newness will be presented to us next Sunday in the liturgical celebration of Jesus, King of the universe.   
• We may also consider the readings for today’s liturgy as a way to make us understand the emptiness of luxury, riches.  
• It is an exhortation to be always ready for the coming of the Lord, to wait for him with love and enthusiasm.   

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET MALACHI

v  This book is found at the end of the Old Testament.  

v  But what we consider a name is only a title which means "the messenger"; the author is unknown 

v  From some words and expressions in the text we can deduce that it was written in the V century before Christ, and before the reformation of Ezra and Nehemiah between  480 y 450 B.C.

v  The temple has been rebuilt and worship takes place in it again.  

v  The author denounces the worship the priests offer in the Temple, it is empty, without surrendering to the Lord, on a routine basis.    

v  He sees in the spiritual purification of worship the strength and the source of renewal.   

FIRST READING :  Mal 3:19-20a Ordinary Time 

ü  The day comes blazing like and oven, and on that day the proud and all evil doers will be stubble. 

ü  When the Lord is present, he destroys in us everything that is pride, vanity, lack of love.  We feel like a tree without the branches of our vanity, without the roots of our false security in ourselves

ü  The day of the Lord is neither a day of destruction of the human being, nor of fear, it is the day of the blessing by means of which our Father God cleanses us from all our impurities which do not allow us to reflect our Father's kind face. 

ü  It is like a tender mother which cleans and dresses up her little child who has get him or herself dirtied playing.   

ü  The day of the Lord is a day of blessing, which each one of us should wish present in his or her life to be able to eliminate from ourselves all that keeps us apart from Him and from one another. 

  RESPONSORIAL  PSALM 98: 5-6. 7-8. 9

THE LORD COMES TO RULE THE WORLD WITH  JUSTICE    

Sing praise to the Lord with the harp 

with the harp and melodious song

with trumpets and the sound of the horn

sing joyfully before the King the Lord 

Let the sea and what fills it resound

the world and those who dwell in it

let the rivers clap their hands

the mountains shout with them for joy 

Before the Lord for he comes

'for he comes to rule the earth

he will rule the world with justice

and the peoples with equity 

Ø   This psalm is an invitation to the whole created world to sing with joy the presence of God in its midst.

Ø  And it is also an invitation to sing because the Lord governs with justice, he brings justice among us.  

Ø  Those of us who thirst for justice, who long for the differences among us to be eliminated because we are all brothers and sisters, children of the one and only Father, we are invited to join the song of joy of creation.   

Ø  Also, those of us who long that creation: plants, animals and everything in the created world be respected and taken care of, since they are also the work of our Father. We are all invited to rejoice with the presence of the Lord.  

Ø  But this will only happen when we love him unconditionally, above everything and everyone, when we trust in him, knowing that his love is without end.  

GOSPEL  Lk 21:5-19

       Some are fascinated to see the beauty and the riches of the temple, and they say it aloud. 

      Jesus, as always, will surprise them, he says that a day will come when all that beauty will be destroyed.   

      The material aspect of the temple, its stones will be destroyed, and also its spiritual centrality in the worship of the people of the Old Covenant.    

      They might have thought that this was not possible, since the temple was the real presence of God among his people, it was the security in his protection over them.   

      And they want to know when this will happen  

      Jesus does not satisfy their curiosity, and does not give any concrete answer, it is enough for them to know that it will happen; when? it is not for them to know.   

      After that he tells them not to believe anyone who will come in his name, but instead to hold fast to faith in his words and in the Father's love, in the word he says to us in the sacred book of life and in the sacred book of the Bible.  

      What he has said to them is not imminent, but yes there will be natural phenomena which scare us: hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and many others, but this is not the sign of the end. 

      there will also be wars, hatred among peoples, but this is not the end. 

      even more, they will be persecuted by their own relatives, they will be handed over to tribunals, condemned to death, but this is not the end. 

      Jesus in these words eliminates the distance in different moments in time, because he speaks of the destruction of the temple which happened in the year 70, and also he speaks about things that have happened along the human race journey through history, and are still happening.  

      It is as if he was looking at a large canvas with threads of different colors which make up the work of art. When the work of art is finished, we do not know when each one of the threads was introduced in the canvas, neither what part of the work of art was made first.  

      We call this speech of Jesus scatological, which means it speaks of what will happen at the end.  

      The end will be beautiful since it will be the instauration in creation of the kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and equity.   Then finally we will be one family, a family of different peoples who will love and respect each other, and all together we will experience the fatherly embrace of the Father of Jesus, our Father God

      But while we wait for this to happen, Jesus invites us to be perseverant in seeking the good, persevering in the way which leads us to him, and persevering in seeking and welcoming all our brothers and sisters to journey together.    

      Come soon,  Lord Jesus!!!  

SECOND READING  2 Tes 3:7-12

v  The author of this letter invites each member of his community, to provide for their family and themselves  from their work, to not be a burden for anyone, not acting like busy bodies.     

v  He reminds them how he lived among them, how he worked to take care of his needs, to give them an example, maybe he wants to say to teach them with his own way of life.   

v  And he adds that he could have asked them for help, since the laborer is entitled to receive its recompense, as we read in another letter of Paul

v  Those who are busy doing nothing, he urges them to eat their bread working quietly, but if they do not want to work, it is very simple they should not eat either.  

v  But he says something that we need all of us who are on the other side of the pendulum, who work too much, so much that we do not have time to really live our life.  

v  He says, "work quietly," I think this is an invitation for us, an invitation to seek a healthy equilibrium between working to earn our food and to enjoy and cultivate the values of human relationships, especially in the family.   

 CLARETIAN CORNER  

 To be contemplative in action means for the Claretian Missionary Sister to be always in search of something better, of someone; it means to be in a permanent attitude of pilgrim, of pilgrim of faith, ready to be surprised by every event, The example of Mary the Mother of Jesus whom John Paul II defined as the "pilgrim of faith" (Redemptoris Mater, 5), because She "kept all these things by meditating on them in her heart". Precisely because she was ready to be instructed, to be surprised, by words and events, she kept them in her heart. For this reason, she was a pilgrim of faith; she had to go on pilgrimage in the uncertainty of faith until she reached the discovery of the mystery contained in those words or those events. 

The Claretian Missionary Sister, like Mary, whom she takes as a luminous sign in her journey (Const. 9), knows that in her small and insignificant personal daily history, in the weary and even disfigured face of each brother, whom she sees, God himself comes to her with a personal call. Her own history and the faces of her brothers and sisters are a theological place where she can discover the God of Salvation History. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALVAREZ GÓMEZ, Jesús. La visión inicial.

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

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según las Escrituras, Año C.

La Biblia de Nuestro Pueblo . Luis Alonso Schökel.