25 SUNDAY
IN ORDINARY TIME - A – 2023
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Two Sundays ago,
we were invited to love our brothers and sisters caring for them and advising
them with love.
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Last Sunday in the
Gospel Jesus says that we must forgive seventy times seven if someone sins
against us.
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Today the parable
of the owner of the vineyard and the workers is another way to invite us to be
generous and to understand that the reward is God himself, and therefore it
cannot be divided, we all receive the same gift, eternal life.
FIRST READING Is 55:6-9
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Today’s
Reading is taken from the Second Isaiah called also Deutero-Isaiah or Book of
Consolation.
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It is
of an exceptional beauty, its words give comfort to the heart.
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Seek
the Lord while you may find him, while he allows himself to be found.
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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 allows the loved one to find him or
her.
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After
that there is an invitation to abandon evil, to change, to go back to the Lord
who is generous in forgiveness.
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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.
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My
thoughts are generous no mean like yours.
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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 our communities, as well, filling them with love and compassion.
GOSPEL Mt 20:1-16a
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Chapter 19 ends
with the sentence “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”
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At the beginning
of chapter 20 Matthew tells us this parable that Jesus told, about the owner of
the vineyard.
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This parable
tells us what the kingdom of God is all about.
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It is like a landowner
who has a vineyard and needs workers who can work in it, who will be willing to
pick up the grapes that probably are already ripe.
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This image of men
waiting for someone to give them work, was something that Jesus had seen many
times .
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Still today in
many places people who need to work and people who need workers meet at certain
points of the towns.
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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.
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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.
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No one has hired you?
No one. Go to my vineyard and I will pay what is just.
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All go, some worked
all day long, some worked some hours and the last worked only one hour.
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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.
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What is this? What an injustice! Some have worked more than 12 hours and the last only
one hour…
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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?
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Why is this way of
retribution just?
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This is what they
had agreed.
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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, when you have done
what you had to do say we are useless servants. Te salary depends on the loving
disposition of our God.
§
Do you think that
the owner of the house will praise the servant who has done what he was told to
do?
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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
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The community of
Philippi was the most cherished community by Paul, and Paul was loved very much
by the community.
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This letter
belongs to the group of letters called “captivity letters” because they were
written in prison.
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Paul was in
prison twice thus it is difficult to date this letter. The date will be between
the years 50-60.
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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:
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A theological
jewel: the Christological Hymn
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Autobiographical notes
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The church
organization: bishops and deacons
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The teaching of
Paul about the encounter of the believer with Christ after death.
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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 living 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.
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O that our love
be like his! and we might experience this inner fight, between being with the
Lord in heaven or remain 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
In this petition which, later I understood, was very much to the liking of His Divine Majesty, because it was done with much simplicity and good will, our Lord has deigned to teach me with much pleasure how He would like to be served by this ungrateful creature…He set before my eyes the observance of His most Holy Law and evangelical counsels, and told me to observe them with much perfection; he told me with intense sorrow that He had no body in Hid house to observe them, for the great extent that all the religious orders had gone lax in the observance of His most Holy Law and because of this He permitted with grief, their destruction.I was shocked at this because I had always believed that all persons who profess perfection served God faithfully and for this, I wanted to be a religious. Here, once more our Lord put, as of what I can understand, before the eyes of my soul, because with my bodily eyes I did not see anything, His most Holy Law and Evangelical Counsel. Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 3-4.
I was christened Anthony Adjutor John. My mother's brother, Anthony Clara, was my godfather, and he wanted me to be named after him. My father's sister, Mary Claret, was my godmother. She was married to Adjutor Canudas, so they gave me her husband's Christian name. My third name, John, was my father's name. Later, out of devotion to Mary Most Holy, I added the sweet name of Mary, my mother, my patroness, my directress and my all, after Jesus. Thus my name is Anthony Mary Adjutor John Claret y Clara. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 5-6.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CLARET, Anthony Mary
Claret, Autobiography.
PAGOLA, José A. El camino abierto
por Jesús. PPC 2012
PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiography
STOCK, Klemens. La Liturgia de la Palabra. Ciclo A (Mateo) 2007
SAGRADA BIBLIA. Versión oficial de la Conferencia Episcopal Española.
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