First Reading – Wisdom 9:13-18 ©
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm
89(90):3-6, 12-14, 17 ©
Second Reading – Philemon 9-10, 12-17
©
Gospel Acclamation – John 15:15
Alternative Acclamation – Palms
118:135
The Gospel According to Luke 14:25 -
33 ©
(NJB)
Listen!
The
sage is asking rhetorical questions: Who can know the intentions of God or fathom
the heavenly will?
The
answer is not “no-one.”
God
has endowed us with the gift of wisdom, God’s own spirit dwells within us, and
where God is present God is present fully.
Nevertheless,
we must admit the fact that our ability to discern God’s intentions for
creation is occluded by our material condition.
What
we are able to say is this:
God
has made us and the entire creation free from divine coercion.
2. God
does not intervene in our lives, and has no specific intentions for us
regarding a particular outcome for any particular event.
3. God
only desires we demonstrate our love for the divine through the caring we share
with each other, that we walk humbly and exhibit mercy in the furtherance of justice
all the days of our lives.
4. God
will bless everyone.
God
is with us, yes, God has established in us all a desire and a longing for the
divine. This longing pulls at us, drawing us in God’s spirit to the fullness of
God’s self, but God does not interfere with our choices, God does not intervene
in the consequences of those choices, God does not take sides either for us or
against us, God does interject the divine self self into our mundane ambitions.
Be
mindful.
When
God is our refuge it is because we have made God so.
God
is indeed the eternal-creator of all that is, we are little more than a speck
of dust in the face of the infinite, but God knows us, and God loves us, even
in our relative insignificance; the infinite is connected to us in an intimate
way, in a way that supersedes the limitations of our mortal coil.
Know
this!
We
are, each of us individually, and together as a whole; infinitely less than the
infinite God. That is how we come into being, in the darkness of time and
space, and yet within us is a piece of that infinite being, like a seed, which
carries the whole within the part, and that divine seed like the eternal fire
is a constitutional element of our being,
God
is never angry with us; we do not suffer because God desires to see us suffer,
we do not sorrow because it please God to see us sorrowful. God’s justice is
not distributed in that way.
We
are created with the capacity for sorrow and suffering so that we may
understand the blessing of joy and peace.
When
we are sorrowful and we suffer, we cause suffering and sorrow in those who
witness it, especially those who love us. Just as when we rejoice, those who
love us and the stranger among us feel what we feel, and God is there too
knowing what we know, understanding our experience as we understand it
ourselves.
Consider
the teaching of the apostle; Paul demonstrates his personal commitment to the
mission he accepted: to share the good news and the teachings of Jesus,
concerning the way he lived and the life
he commended to us, a commitment that led the apostle into first into captivity,
and ultimately to his death.
Paul
desires that all people come to understand the transitory nature of the
material world and come to trust in the divine promise that leads us on the
path to eternal life. He wants us to understand that any person can change
their station, can elevate themselves from the circumstances of their birth,
can go from being a salve to a leader in the church; if they persevere in the way there are no obstacles that
cannot be overcome, no threshold that cannot be crossed, no heaven that cannot
be reached in the service of God.
Paul
would say…follow God’s commandment, and the command is to love…love Paul would
say, is the whole of the law. To love one another, to give of one’s self to
another…there is no greater gift.
The
love that we are called to is not the love we call desire, though to desire and
be desired is an experience of great joy. We are called to move past the love
we call desire and past the love we have for family and friends, because to
love in that way is only a short extension of the love we have for ourselves. As
you know, we see ourselves in the faces of our mothers and fathers, we see our
ambitions as tied to the ambitions of our friends. We are called to love in a
greater capacity than to simply love them.
We
are called to love to the point of selflessness, to love even those who are
against us, to love our enemies, to forgive those who have hurt us and done us
harm, to feed the stranger and protect them…to do so out of love.
Do this.
Allow
yourself to be moved by the living judgment of the living God. As the psalmist
says: God’s rulings are filled with wonder and awe.
God,
the creator of the universe, the God of light and warmth, our God is the God who
loves, who teaches love and who desires that we love in return; demonstrate your
love for God through the care you show to your sisters and brothers, your
neighbor and the stranger in your company.
This
is the great commandment, it is the commission you have taken up when you were baptized
in God’s name.
Understand
this!
There
are places in the scriptures where the words attributed to Jesus are out of
keeping with the character the reader has come to know about him. Today’s
reading from Luke is one of those places.
It
is jarring to hear the voice of Jesus speaking to us about the necessity of
hate, of hating your father, your mother, your wife, your children, your
sibling and even yourself. It is jarring because Jesus is the man who; more
than any other prophet, speaks to us of love.
Love
God, the creator of the universe; Love God with all your strength, and all your
heart and all your mind, love your neighbor as yourself, this is the whole of
the law.
Jesus
calls us to love not hate; we are created in love, and called by the loving God
to be good and do good in the world; we are called to be merciful, to be
advocates for the marginalized and disenfranchised, to be compassionate with
everyone we meet.
As
Paul said:
If
we speak in the tongues of angels and are not loving, then our voices are butclanging
cymbals, dissonant and incoherent,
In
consideration of these virtues: trust, hope and love, the greatest is love,
because it is the root of the other two.
It
is out of keeping with the teaching of Jesus to dissuade us from a course of
action simply because we will be publicly ridiculed if we fail. It is out of
step with the wisdom of Jesus to compare the work of his disciples to the machinations
of kings and generals. It is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus to pretend
that the work of the church is a march of conquest rather than process of conversion.
The
scripture for today represents the thoughts and fears of the church in the
second or third generation after Jesus. It represents the mind of church in a
time of persecution, but also a time of building. It shows the feelings of a
community trying to establish itself, while looking to remove the weak and the poorly
prepared from their congregations. It articulates the limitations of human
wisdom, not the wisdom of the divine…just as the sage had noted.
These
are the hopes and fears of men whose understanding of their heavenly purpose is
occluded by their material condition.
Be
mindful.
When
we strip the gospel for today down to its essence the advice presented here is
not bad.
It
is a call for total commitment.
It
says to the church, be ready to complete what you have started, and be ready to
give everything you have, including your life for the work you believe in, but
it is missing the final thought lasting shape to the necessary context that is
only provided by the eternal good that is the divine will: if you fail (and you
will fail) you will still be loved by God.
First Reading – Wisdom 9:13-18 ©
Who can divine the will of God?
What
man indeed can know the intentions of God?
Who
can divine the will of the Lord?
The
reasonings of mortals are unsure and our intentions unstable; for a perishable
body presses down the soul, and this tent of clay weighs down the teeming mind.
It
is hard enough for us to work out what is on earth, laborious to know what lies
within our reach; who, then, can discover what is in the heavens?
As
for your intention, who could have learnt it, had you not granted Wisdom and
sent your holy spirit from above?
Thus
have the paths of those on earth been straightened and men been taught what
pleases you, and saved, by Wisdom.
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm
89(90):3-6, 12-14, 17 ©
O Lord, you have been our refuge from
one generation to the next.
You
turn men back to dust
and say: ‘Go back, sons of men.’
To
your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday, come and gone,
no more than a watch in the night.
O Lord, you have been our refuge from
one generation to the next.
You
sweep men away like a dream,
like the grass which springs up in the
morning.
In
the morning it springs up and flowers:
by evening it withers and fades.
O Lord, you have been our refuge from
one generation to the next.
Make
us know the shortness of our life
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Lord,
relent! Is your anger for ever?
Show pity to your servants.
O Lord, you have been our refuge from
one generation to the next.
In
the morning, fill us with your love;
we shall exult and rejoice all our days.
Let
the favour of the Lord be upon us:
give success to the work of our hands.
O Lord, you have been our refuge from
one generation to the next.
Second Reading – Philemon 9-10, 12-17
©
He is a Slave No Longer, but a Dear Brother
in the Lord
This
is Paul writing, an old man now and, what is more, still a prisoner of Christ
Jesus. I am appealing to you for a child of mine, whose father I became while
wearing these chains: I mean Onesimus. I am sending him back to you, and with
him – I could say – a part of my own self. I should have liked to keep him with
me; he could have been a substitute for you, to help me while I am in the
chains that the Good News has brought me. However, I did not want to do
anything without your consent; it would have been forcing your act of kindness,
which should be spontaneous. I know you have been deprived of Onesimus for a
time, but it was only so that you could have him back for ever, not as a slave
any more, but something much better than a slave, a dear brother; especially
dear to me, but how much more to you, as a blood-brother as well as a brother
in the Lord. So if all that we have in common means anything to you, welcome
him as you would me.
Gospel Acclamation – John 15:15
Alleluia, alleluia!
I
call you friends, says the Lord, because I have made known to you everything I
have learnt from my Father.
Alleluia!
Alternative Acclamation – Palms 118:135
Alleluia, alleluia!
Let
your face shine on your servant; and teach me your decrees.
Alleluia!
The Gospel According to Luke 14:25 -
33 ©
Anyone Who Does Not Carry His Cross
and Follow Me Cannot Be My Disciple
Great
crowds accompanied Jesus on his way and he turned and spoke to them. ‘If any
man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers,
sisters, yes and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple. Anyone who does
not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
‘And
indeed, which of you here, intending to build a tower, would not first sit down
and work out the cost to see if he had enough to complete it? Otherwise, if he
laid the foundation and then found himself unable to finish the work, the
onlookers would all start making fun of him and saying, “Here is a man who
started to build and was unable to finish.” Or again, what king marching to war
against another king would not first sit down and consider whether with ten
thousand men he could stand up to the other who advanced against him with
twenty thousand? If not, then while the other king was still a long way off, he
would send envoys to sue for peace. So in the same way, none of you can be my
disciple unless he gives up all his possessions.’
A Homily – The Twenty-third Sunday in
Ordinary Time (Year C)
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