XXIII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME   - CYCLE  A – SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

ü  Ezekiel has been called to be the watchman for the house of Israel. 

ü  Jesus invites us to help and love one another within our community.  

ü  Paul invites us not to own anything to anyone except love.  

 

FIRST READING   Ez 33:7-9

v  Who was  Ezekiel?  

o   The book of Ezekiel is found within the group of books called “Major Prophets.” 

o   The author  is a priest who lived in Jerusalem. 

o   And was deported to Babylon with the first group of exiles in 597 BC. 

v  The book   

o   The literary composition of this book makes us think that it has been written by only one person, which is not the case in many books of the Old Testament.  

o   The emphasis is not put on the oracles or the symbolic actions that this man has to do but on the command to accomplish them, that is to say in God. 

o   There is a continuous presence of the Lord in these oracles, and in the life of this man. God gives him the command to do gestures and say words, and at the same time God also tells him what the reaction of the people will be.  

o   We find in the structure of this book the following elements: 

§  A vision at the beginning which gives the tone to the whole book 

§  The fall of Jerusalem which is found at the center of the book.  

§  After that we have a series of chapters condemning and announcing the salvation for Israel.     

§  Between the announcements of condemnation and the oracles of salvation for Israel, we find oracles related to the nations.  

§  As the conclusion of the book there is the vision of the new organization of the country and of the temple.   

 

v  The Message

o    There are many disturbing problems, but there is a central point of interest   

§  Give hope to a national and religious community that is suffering a crisis.   

§  Which is not only the consequence of the ambition of other powerful nations 

§  But Israel has a great responsibility in all of this due to its behavior, because    

§  The destiny of the peoples is based on its own responsibility, which is translated into just or unjust behaviors in the different areas of life: religion and politics.   

LET US REFLECT ON TODAY’S READING

Ø  Son of man I have appointed you as the watchman for the house of Israel.   

Ø  When you hear me  say something, you have to repeat it 

Ø  If I say something addressed to the sinner to change his behavior and you do not repeat it to him, he will remain in his wickedness that is leading him to death, but you will be responsible of his death due to his sin. 

Ø  If I say something for the wicked to change and he does not pay attention to you, he will be responsible of the consequences of this refusal, but you  will not be responsible, you will be saved.    

Ø  It seems that the prophet is trying to tell us that we are responsible of one another, that we need to care about the behavior of our brothers and sisters who journey with us in life, not to judge them, but to announce to them where salvation is found. 

Ø  If we do not do it we will be responsible that the evil continue to grow and that our brothers and sisters do not know the salvation which the Lord has brought to us

Ø  The prophet in this book wants that the people realize and also  that we realize the responsibility of the consequences of our actions, especially of our response to the call of God.   

Ø  We are not called to lord over our brothers and sisters or to condemn them, but to love. This love has to be a fire inside of us which makes us realize how much we hurt ourselves, how much our brothers and sisters hurt themselves with our sins, sins that do not allow us to discover the love which God has for each one of us.  

Ø  As St. Anthony M. Claret said, each person is the image of God, of our Father, and how can I allow this image to be trampled down, dirty and destroyed by our sins?  

 

RESPONSORIAL PSALM:  Ps  95: 1-2. 6-7. 8-9

 

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.    

 .

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.    

 

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.”

 

ü  This psalm is an invitation to acclaim, to sing with enthusiasm to our God because he has saved us.  

ü  Let us go with joy, enter with acclamations, bend our knees, acclaim with music… because he is our God   

ü  And we are his people, the people he guides.  

ü  The sheep of his flock, why sheep? Because in Israel the king is the shepherd, David the great king of Israel, the king who had the heart like the heart of God, had been a shepherd.   

ü  The shepherd makes us thing about a tender and continuous care for the sheep

ü  This responsorial psalm ends with the stanza which invites us to remember what had happened in the past to those who abandoned the Lord, so that might  not repeat this situation now.    

 

GOSPEL  Mt 18:15-20

v  In this gospel we find two themes related to the life in community, the community of the followers of Jesus.  

v  The first theme: fraternal correction.    

o   All that we can do to help each other when we are destroying ourselves by our sins.  

o   To seek all the possible ways: between the two of us, with the few others, with the community…  

o   The Lord is not telling us to supervise the behavior of our brothers and sisters to be scandalized by it and so condemn them because we think that we are better than the rest

o   We are called by the Lord to live the one commandment he has given us “the new commandment”  

o   And which one it is? He said to us before his death “love one another as I have loved you” and we also know that someplace else he said “I have not come to condemn but to save.”  

o   We cannot save anyone, but we can help others to find the way which leads to the intimacy with the one who can save, which is the Lord Jesus.  

v  The second theme: when two or three gather in the name of Jesus, Jesus himself is in their midst, in our gathering  

o   We gather together in the name of the Lord, this means that it is not any gathering, but one in his name.  

o   It is a gathering to pray, to ask the Lord something.  

o   The Father will give it to you   

o   Because where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them, and the Father always listens to me.  

o   Every Sunday we gather in his name, these are consoling words. How these words have the power to fill us with enthusiasm every Sunday when we come to celebrate the Eucharist.   There is so much to ask for, for the human race, for ourselves, for our brothers and sisters who journey with us toward the Father

 

SECOND READING  Rm 13:8-10

v  Paul invites us to love one another. This coming Sunday the theme of the second reading coincides with the other two readings.   

v  Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another. 

v  Because all the commandments: you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet and any other commandment  

v  Are summed up in this saying “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

v  Love is the fulfillment of the law because it does not hurt our neighbor.  

v  In what a beautiful way Paul compares the new law to the old one given by God  on Mount Sinai.  

v  The old law was summed up in: love God above everything else and your neighbor as yourself. 

v  Jesus pronounces again this same law and invites us to love one another as he has loved us. 

v  In his love Jesus is moved by his unconditional love as son toward the Father, and as brother toward each one of us; and  he invites us to do the same.  

v  We only have to remember, to love one another, because this entails also the love toward the Father, because without his love in us, we could not love as Jesus has loved. 

 

CLARETIAN CORNER  

 

We arrived in the port of Lanzarote on March 29 and we left on May 3. They treated us with the same love and comfort on the last day as in the first and they showed a love so great that they offered me a house and promised to do all the negotiations to found there a monastery, with at least two of us. (The Lord had done to me this grace of being loved extremely by the person with whom I have lived.) Blessed be God our Lord who did so for his glory! O, my heavenly father, you are a true Father and men do not know You! What father more caring and a mother more compassionate could come more eagerly to care and assist us in all our needs? No one. Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 154.

 

After this I went to the city of El Cobre, where Fathers Manuel Subirana and Francisco Coca were giving the mission, as I had said. They had worked very hard, with excellent results. Suffice it to say that when they got there only eight couple were properly married; and by the time the mission was over, 400 couples who had been living together illicitly were married. I stayed thee several days, administering the Sacrament of Confirmation, putting the finishing touches on the mission, and legitimizing some unions, in virtue of the faculties granted me by the Holy See. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 517.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CLARET, Antonio María Claret, Autobiografía.

PAGOLA, José A.   El camino abierto por Jesús. PPC 2012

PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiografía

STOCK, Klemens. La Liturgia de la Palabra. Ciclo A (Mateo)  2007

LA BIBLIA, traducción tomada de la página web del Vaticano.

SAGRADA BIBLIA. Versión oficial de la Conferencia Episcopal Española.