23^rd  SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME   -  A – 2023

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 owe anything to anyone except love.   

FIRST READING   Ez 33:7-9

v  Who was Ezequiel?  

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 beforehand what the reaction of the people to the oracle 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.

§  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 can be found. 

Ø  If we do not do it, we will be responsible that the evil continues 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 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 them. This love must be a fire inside of us which makes us realize how much we hurt ourselves, how much our brothers and sisters are  hurt by 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.    

 . 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.    

 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.”

 IF TODAY YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS 

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 we may not repeat this situation now.   

GOSPEL:  Mt 18:15-20

v  In this gospel we find two themes related to 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 a 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 is it? 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 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 for 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 us, 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 these words, which as Jesus said to the teacher of the law are the commandment similar to the first “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 must remember, to love one another, because this also entails the love toward the Father, because without his love in us, we could not love as Jesus has loved. 

CLARETIAN CORNER  

 Upon arriving in Cuba he encounters an extremely complex and difficult situation of the family, so he makes a clear choice for the family. [... ] It was precisely the care to protect the family and the search for solutions to the marital problems, which cost him more suffering and persecutions, even shedding his blood. He devotes a large part of his first Pastoral Letter to the theme of the family and its value; to marriage, the children education etc.

It promoted family welfare by resolving possible anomalies, reforming customs and restoring morality. He defended the dignity and the rights of women and children against the abuses of unjust social customs. [... ]  As a Pastor, aware of his duty and the right to freedom he wrote to the Captain General ... No interest has brought me here from Spain... poor I was, poor I lived and poor I remain... the day I see that my hands are tied to do  good, or that nobody listens to my voice, as long as my pretensions are founded in justice and charity itself, which are the only stimuli to act I recognize, that day I will leave my post and nothing will be lost... because the missionary character is enough for me to be poor, to love God, to love my neighbors and to win their souls at the same time as mine.(Claret in Santiago de Cuba on March 28, 1851, from the book of Galeron p.31).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GALERÓN, María Soledad RMI. Llamada que la Memoria de Significativos Acontecimientos Históricos Congregacionales nos hacen Hoy.  Santiago de Cuba 2023.

LA BIBLIA DE NUESTRO PUEBLO. Texto de Luis Alonso Schökel.

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

Pagina Web del Vaticano, Papa Benedicto XVI ángelus 8/28/2011; Papa Francisco ángelus 8/31/2014.

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

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