33RD
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment