THIRTY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A: CHRIST THE KING

THIRTY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A: CHRIST THE KING FEAST
(Ezek 34:11-12, 15-17; Ps 22:1-6; 1Cor 15:20-26, 28; Math 25:31-46)

Theme: Let us place ourselves under the kingship of Jesus Christ and thus become part of God’s kingdom

Reflection:

- Today, we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, in fact, it is a Solemnity. Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe, thus believes and proclaims the Church, and everything on the earth, under the earth and in the skies is placed under His rule and reign. Therefore, we are called today to this Eucharistic celebration, not merely to believe Jesus to be a king but to live the attitudes and requirements of His Reign.
- The Church offers this feast at the end of the Liturgical Year, that is, on its celebration of the Last Sunday of the Ordinary Time and it is for two reasons:
o First: The whole of the liturgical year is a ‘walk in the footsteps of Jesus’. We listen to him, we wonder at his great deeds, we rejoice in his presence with us – in the word and in the sacrament – and finally, we reflect the whole life of Jesus on earth from his nativity to his death and resurrection. Thus the Church offers us the complete and perfect picture of Jesus – his life and ministry – and finally acknowledging God’s design of love for the humanity in His Eternal Son Jesus.
o Second: At the completion of our one year reflection on the life of Jesus, the church proposes that, we have to make Him our Lord and King. By celebrating this feast, we are called to ‘discover’ our true faith in Him, above all, to ‘accept’ Him to be our Head and Master and thus Our King and thus ‘placing whole of our life’ under His reign.
- We are reflecting the last pages of the Gospel of Mathew and after the two important and significant parables – that of the ten virgins and of the talents – we move to enter into the final stages of Jesus before His journey towards the cross and glory – passion, death and resurrection. Therefore, after meditating that we should be always ‘awake’ to meet the Bridegroom and be always at work to ‘fructify’ the kingdom and finally we have to be ready to the final judgment which would be our last appearance before Jesus Christ, the King and the Judge, before we receive our just wages for our life on earth.
- Thus, today we have to reflect on the kingship of Christ and the actual development of the notion of His kingship so that we place under his rule totally and wholeheartedly.

First Reading:

- The Lord is a Shepherd and King:
o Ezekiel, the prophet of the promise of the new spirit and new life (Chap 36), demonstrates and pictures God as being the shepherd and thus a king - a classical image of the times - because in those days, the rulers were also called to be the shepherds of the nations;
o Today’s reading is very much comprehensible because of its two combinations:
 One is that of negative and frightening: the human, political and religious pastors who are very often self-interested and egoists, who are mercenaries and guardians of their own rights and properties than being the defenders of their flocks and we see this image in the first part of the 34th chapter of Ezekiel (vv.1-10) that speaks of the false shepherds of Israel.
 Second is that of positive and illuminating: the image of the good pastor that is also affirmed by Jesus Himself in the 10th chapter of John: Good Pastor who leads his flock to the green lands and if needed gives his life for them; and again the figure of ‘great pastor of the sheep and guardian of the souls’ (Heb 13:20; 1Pt 2:25); in a word, a pastor who is passionate and loving in his relations to the flock. This is seen in the second part of the 34th chapter of Ezekiel (vv.31) that speaks of the True Shepherd of Israel and we find the beauty of the promises of the Shepherd to this people.
- Shepherd of an action, not of a mere words:
o Event the Psalm sings the Lord as being a shepherd and we have everything we need in his presence and under his guidance – “the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” (Ps 23:1).
o In the first reading too we can observe with great care the ‘deeds’ and ‘actions’ of the Shepherd:
 To seek out the sheep (v.11): the first task of the shepherd is to ‘search’ for the sheep and to find it; Jesus says that ‘I have come to seek and save the lost’ (Lk 19).
 To rescue the sheep (v.12): the shepherd safeguards his sheep from any undesirable situation; Jesus says that ‘I will gather my sheep’ (Jn 10).
 To gather the sheep under into one sheepfold (v.13): the shepherd calls together and unites all the dispersed sheep; Jesus tells “When I am lifted up I will gather all people to myself” (Jn 3).
 To feed them (v.14): providing the good pastures is the responsibility of the shepherd; Jesus says that “I am living bread from heaven…….. if anyone eats my body and drinks my blood will have eternal life” (Jn 6).
 To make them repose (v.15): the good shepherd gives them the necessary rest and makes them be at peace and tranquility keeping aside all the worries; and Jesus tells, “come to me all that are labored and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11).
 Saves what was lost, injured, weak (v.16): the good shepherd is always with the sheep and he finds, heals and strengthens them with his presence and power; and Jesus says “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10).
o The true shepherd do not spend the time in long discussions and discourses but shows mercy and does good by his immediate actions; Jesus too, after filling the hearts of the people with his good news of the kingdom, feeds them with the good and abundant pastures (the finest wine in the wedding of Cana and overabundant food at the miracle of feeding the five thousand). They are the great examples for the actions of the shepherd who cares not only the spiritual aspect of his sheep but also other aspects.


Second Reading:

- In Christ everyone receives their proper reward: the life or the condemnation
o St. Paul demonstrates the two challenges of the humanity in the history of the world:
 One is of the descendents of the First Adam, the sinner, through whom the ‘death and solitude’ have entered into the world and thus be lost in the darkness and be shattered into different places;
 Second is of the followers of the New Adam, Jesus Christ, the savior, through whom, ‘the life and the glory’ are available for those who believe him and live according to his ways and be united to him as one Body;
o Both of these are ‘brought back’ which travel towards their perfect unity with God:
 Starting point and the first one is always Christ who has died and risen to the new life and having entered into the eternal life he become the ‘first born’ of all and thus enters into the Glory of God;
 Then all those who have ‘with the true faith and genuine works’ accepted and witnessed him in their life – the true Christians (who are of Christ: v.23) - into their Eternal Bliss;
 Finally and at the last, all the rest, that is, ‘principalities, authorities, powers, enemies and the death, (v.24) – whole of creation and all the beings - who remain in their struggle and journey towards their great and definitive day of judgment, day of the final end;
 All have to receive their proper post – their deserved place – at the end of their existence in the world; it is Jesus Christ himself who will put them in their proper places: ‘each in his own order’ (v.23).
 Once everything is put in its proper place, all these will be brought under one rule, that is, the ‘subjection’ to him (v.27-28).
- Kingship of Christ is to make “God to be all in all”:
o Christ is a King because he is victorious over all the powers of the world and he has put everything under him;
o Christ is a king because He has put himself, as a Son sent to fulfill his mission, under the subjection of God;
o The kingship of Christ, thus, is not to rule everything by himself but to place everything in the one Kingdom of God for which God alone is the King and Lord.
o The kingship of Christ, thus, is not the exercise of power but of ‘reuniting’ everything in God so that whole creation will have its original being: “God being all in all” (v. 28).

Gospel:

- Context of Judgment on the basis of looking God in the face of the needy:
o The whole wonderful scenario of the Gospel narrative is distributed on the two levels which are both parallel and antithetical:
o One is the negative and dark side of the scene – the left side of the Judge – who are to be given the just wages of their dark or neglect life: the goats.
o Other is the positive and luminous side of the scene – the right side of the Judge – who are to be given the part of the promise for their vigilant and operative life: the sheep.
o In both of them God wanted to give a sense to the story of the creation and man and to their relationship between themselves and between them and their creator – the sense on which the judgment is based: the sense of love.
o To make this sense come true, God has planned and sent his Son into the world so that He could establish the Kingdom of joy, peace and justice, the three that are integrated into one word, love and accordingly Jesus has established it: the Reign of Love.
o The intention of God is that following His kingdom and His Son the whole humanity will participate in it with the same mission of sowing the seeds of love with their just attitude and right conduct and authentic action and thus they are to fulfill the salvific project of God: children of God, in other words – ‘God be all in all’ of Paul in the second reading.
o Finally, in this process it moves towards its perfect and definitive design of God of receiving the crown of glory and participating in the Eternal life (v.46).
- God does not demand from us a great life but simple gestures of help: the extension of the heart towards all without reserve:
o This gospel passage is, in spite of its usage of many images, not a parable but is a solemn description the judgment of the end of times; we can see this difference between the two passages of 25th chapter first one with the verse 1 and the second with the verse 14 and the beginning of today’s passage v.31;
o The teaching is not new; it is same old and traditional attitude of the chosen people of Israel. From the beginning of antic laws (Ex 22:20-23:9) till the book of Job (chapters 29-31) the teaching is same: the just man is at the service of the poor and weak who feeds the hungry and accommodates the stranger.
o Though all that Jesus says of the needy seems to be old teaching it is given new understanding and new conclusion – in fact He has come not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17) giving them their perfect meaning: the central part of the passage is v. 40: “if you have done to one of these little children of mine you have done it to me.” This is then new teaching; before this nobody imagined that ‘serving the needy is serving the Lord’.
o In Jesus both ‘God and man’ become one: He asks the just ones: “come, you blessed by my Father” and thus reminding them the alliance that God made with them and finally saying “you have done it to me”: in this way he combines both the love of God and love of Neighbor; He becomes the central point through whom one can reach God and neighbor since being God he made himself our neighbor.
o The Son of man v.31: under the image of pastor (25:32) he is also being presented as the king (25:34, 40) and he becomes the Son of man (therefore, God-man, God and man) who judges the nations; He is not a judge only for few people or few groups but he presents himself as the judge of all the people (v.32) and so, a universal judge; the king is presented also as a son (v.34) because his power is not of his own but of the Father who gives him everything (John 13:1-3);
o The judgment seems to be very severe: to the one he says: “Come, blessed by my Father” and to the other, “Go away far away from, you who are cursed”. To the one he says, “You receive in hereditary the kingdom that was prepared for you from the beginning of the world” and to the other, “go into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his followers.”
o The little ones, we can think very easily, are those who are poor, the misfortunate, the neglected ones and therefore, the list goes on; thus, the sense of the extending the hand to reach them and to help them is the charitable attitude that every Christian should practice with the truth always in mind that Jesus has made himself a poor – hungry – stranger – wounded.
- Where are we now in this great scenario: the meaning of the passage for us today:
o Jesus is who is God made himself man, thus, he who was rich made himself poor; in this way he remains in each one us and he abides in every one and in everything:
o In this way, helping the other is helping Jesus himself who is in the other: it is human charity that is, charity towards humans – love of neighbors;
o Can we stop here and say that we have done everything? Can we not go further towards the cosmos/nature or the creation in its totality? Thus, helping the nature by saving it from its human-caused calamities is also helping Jesus because he resides also in the nature/cosmos which is groaning to its perfection: it is nature charity that is, charity towards nature – love of the nature.
o Finally, each one is endowed with the dignity and freedom because of his status of being created in the same image and likeness of God and this affirm us that we are the ‘temple of God’ who carry the imprint and presence of God and thus, we are called today to help ourselves too with true image and authentic personality: it is the personal charity that is, charity towards oneself – love of the self;
o One more final analysis: we are on the both sides: the ones who have to help because we are rich in the grace of God as Christians and on the side of the poor because we are also always in the need of something and someone; do we realize this aspect? Once we realize that we are also needy and we need someone to lift us up, we can easily and vigorously help other needy.

Conclusion:

- Radical Question and Quest into research: Did Jesus ever proclaim himself a king?
o If we gaze into the gospels it is clear that Jesus has never proclaimed himself a king and he never wanted to claim to be a king.
o Almost all the gospels speak of the kingship of Jesus only in the presence of Pilot and before his judgment: the conversation is very simple and casual without any intensive approach: Pilot asks Jesus: ‘Are you a king?’ and Jesus does not confirm but only affirms: ‘you tell it’ (Math 27:11), the same appears in Mark 15:2, and Luke 23:3; the discourse is not continued on the kingship, not even the scribes and the Jewish authority; they just bypass it as though it is not the exact thing what they wanted to talk. In John’s gospel the discourse goes little further (Jn 18:28-38) and here the above question arises only at the end of the discourse after which Jesus immediately switch on to reveal the purpose of his coming into the world – to testify the truth and so, Jesus is not interested in being ‘raised to the glory of the king’.
o On one side, Jesus never wanted or not so much interested in proclaiming himself a king because he has come to be with the poor and therefore, to identify himself as – humble and obedient servant – sent by God to proclaim and fulfill the kingdom of God; on the other side, the revelation of his kingship has never been stopped. From the moment of his annunciation to Mary (Lk 1:30ff), with the promise that the one who is to be born will be a king, to the moment of his death on the cross with the inscription on the cross – Jesus king of Jews. It is revealed by first Angel Gabriel, by the Magi, even by simple people when they wanted to make him king after the miracle of multiplication of bread, and on the cross;
o From the humility that Jesus had in his confrontations with the Father and from God who has revealed His regality/kingship to the people through different ways and modes – God always speaks in the various means – we can know that it is finally the ‘simple and perfect event’ of ultimate obedience to the will of God that made him ‘the king over all’ (Phil 2:6-11) and even in the second reading we have seen that God has put everything under His subjection so that everything will be brought back it its original place: being in God – that is, God be all in all.
o But the church acknowledges and proclaims Jesus the King because of His ultimate sacrifice for the salvation of mankind as a Good Shepherd – the shepherd who gives his life for his flock; it proclaims him to be the ‘king of the universe’: thus, He becomes Shepherd-King (the fulfillment of the first reading – as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Concept of king-pastor, he becomes a shepherd who takes care of the abandoned).
o Universe – both creation and the humanity – is affected very badly and is in the clutches of sin and death and is, therefore, in need of a savior who will have an ultimate victory over these two powers - sin and death - and places the universe in its right post. Jesus is a king because he wins and he is a king of universe because he wins over the powers that hold in their power the whole creation and thus becomes the ‘King of the Universe’ (the fulfillment of the second reading Jesus - who wins the sin through his innocent sacrifice and the death through his resurrection to new life – gives back the kingdom of peace and justice to God).
o His victory is not with the army of the world as he professes in the court of the Pilot but belongs to the other world and therefore, to the world of the Father and His Angels; therefore, his fight and his war is not with the horse and sword, which is the normal understanding of a king, but with the Spirit and Love, the new and radical and a spiritual understanding of kingship. This is the criteria through which he will also, one day, call everything into judgment: with the manifestation of love in the proper life; this way, thus, he becomes the ‘King-Judge’ (the fulfillment of the Gospel passage of the scenario of the final appearance).
- The Path made Simple and Accessible:
o We need not struggle too much in order to enter the kingdom of God and to listen to the words of Jesus: ‘come, you blessed by my Father into the heavenly kingdom’: because we know very well the way and how to reach it: the way is to follow Jesus and to reach is to listen to his voice: “my sheep listen my voice”.
o The great deeds are not demanded from us; God asks from us our daily little things:
 A slice of bread to the hungry
 A glass of water to the thirst
 A piece of cloth to the naked
 A kind word to the disappointed/stranger
 A small visit to the sick
 And finally, in a word, a merciful glance to the needy.
o These ‘daily gestures’ are the fulfillment of the totality of the beatitudes that Jesus proposed already at the beginning of his mission of ‘realization of the kingdom of God.’
o We are called to do this and once we do these little things to the little ones around us, we are sure of standing at the right side of the judgment seat – through which we receive crown of glory and eternal happiness.
o Therefore, Let us place ourselves under the kingship of Jesus Christ and thus become part of God’s kingdom so that we are in the Lord and the Lord is in us.

THIRTY THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

THIRTY THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A
( Prov 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1Thess 5:1-6; Math 25:14-30)

Theme: Let us present ourselves to the Lord as Good and Faithful in the smallness of our life

Reflection:

- “Let us present ourselves to the Lord awake and ready to be with Him” was our theme for the reflections of the Last Sunday in which we have meditated - upon the ‘searching for the Wisdom of the Lord’ (first reading), the inspiration of the Psalm to ‘search for Him at the dawn because it is more valuable than anything’ (Responsorial Psalm), the reality of the truth that Jesus is dead and risen which dispels our ignorance and gives us the hope (second reading) and finally, it is ‘prudence and wisdom that keeps us awake and ready in any day or in any hour of life’ (Gospel) – and thus we have the Christian mission of meeting him and we have the possibility only when we are awake from our night of ignorance and only when we are ready with the armor of the day of hope and wisdom.
- “Let us present ourselves to the Lord as Good and Faithful servants” is our theme for today and we are going to meditate how God has entrusted to each one of us a particular and a special task and how far we are in the grade of fulfilling it with fidelity and with responsibility. Before we go deep into the refection of today’s reading we have to make note of the similar themes that we have in the last weeks of the Liturgical year.
- The word ‘present ourselves’ appears quite often these days, specially, it was there in the last Sunday and today and it will be also in the next Sunday, Sunday of the Christ the King before whom we have to present ourselves as ‘good soldiers’ who have accomplished his will and ready to participate in his Kingdom. The Church asks us to prepare ourselves well to ‘stand in front our Lord’ with the ‘mind full of His thoughts’, with the ‘hands full of His actions’ and with the ‘heart full of His life’ and then only we are found well-prepared by our Lord. Therefore, ‘presenting ourselves to the Lord’ is our frequent theme of these Sundays and why:
o This is the time for our personal presentation: we have to give account for all that we had to do and we have finally completed; nobody is responsible for our life; we live the life and we give an balance sheet of how and how far we have reached; this is the time of judgment and reward for the actions we have accomplished.
o This is the time for reaping the fruits: Just before the ending of the liturgical year we are called to ‘sum up’ all that we are entrusted and we have put into practice and to reap the fruit according to our actions which would be: standing on the right-side of the Lord for the premium of blissful life or remaining on the left-side of the Lord for the premium of condemnation and in other words, in the words of the Gospel of today, - sharing in the joy of the master or being thrown outside into the darkness of cry and biting the teeth.
o This is the time for a wise life: we have to lead an accountable and responsible living; because the life is a gift of God and we have to return it to him with the same dignity and commitment; each thought we make and each action we do produce its consequences and it can be a good fruit or it can be bad fruit depending on the ‘wisdom and prudence’ that is utilized in working for it. Once again we are called to live a ‘wise’ life: as we have seen in the first reading of last Sunday, wisdom of God is always available and it makes itself reachable to those who search for it and with the commitment and fatigue of acquiring it because it is more valuable than one’s own life as seen in the Psalm of the last week and finally it makes us: a) to know the will and design of God for us and therefore, makes us to think always of the reality of God and his kingdom and without stopping with the knowledge of Him it, then gives us the force, b) to act upon it immediately and with genuine in-put of personal capabilities and demanded requirements like that of ‘faith, hope and charity’. Only the one who is wise can understand the meaning of life and its destiny and travel towards perfecting it with the love of God and of neighbor.
o Let us enter therefore into the reflections of today’s readings with these points behind our mind and heart so that we are able to understand them better and make them to bear fruit in our life and only in this way we can be ‘good and faithful’ servants and indeed we already are as far as we are called to be so by our Lord and we insofar are mindful of this reality.

First Reading:

- The woman is the personification of the ‘wisdom’ of God:
o In the Wisdom Literature of the Bible, the wisdom or the knowledge of God is always seen in the image of a woman and it is always compared to the nature of a woman: therefore, the reality of wisdom (or the woman) is seen by its fruits, the fruits of hands and of her actions: (v.31):
 It is more valuable than the pearls (v. 10);
 Its recipient is full of confidence and he never has loss in life (v.11);
 It gives joy and a joy that knows no ending (v.12);
 It prepares its garments, the armor of safety from any type of weather (v.13);
 Its hands are always extended to the aid of the poor (v.20);
 It is the fear of the Lord therefore it has to be praised (v.30);
o As the woman is tender in her words, compassionate in her actions, and loving in her charity to others so also the wisdom has the same nature: it makes the recipient kind in his words and committed in his deeds and finally out-reaching in his charitable acts towards the needy;
o As the perfect woman in the reading who knows well her proper life (the life as donated by God in a special way) and who discerns well her proper vocation ( her duty and responsibility in the family, for the husband and for her children) and who completes well her mission of being for others ( her generous and charitable acts for the good of the others), so also the wisdom makes us understand and be perfect by manifesting a life of faith and love.
- The creation is the manifestation of the wisdom of God:
o We are part of creation and we are called also to be ‘above’ the creation in a sense that we are collaborators of the creator and we have the responsibility of ‘producing fruits and multiplying the creation’ (Gen 1:28 – “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the earth”).
o As we have the mission and vocation of ‘being fruitful and producing fruits’ we have also the way to accomplish it and the way is none other than ‘the manifestation of God’s wisdom’:
 We ourselves should become the personification of the wisdom in the sense that we really produce the fruits of wisdom as said above: on the one hand, living a worthy and dignified Christian life and on the other, giving testimony to the same life with the acts of love;
 We make our social sphere – be it the family, be it the community, be it the society, and be it even the political – fruitful; we have the responsibility of making it grow and produce the peace and harmony in the common life; only in this way, we manifest the wisdom of God in our creation of the society/humanity; the same point we will discuss in detail in the Gospel reflections.

The second Reading:

- Paul’s admonition to his people about being always attentive and active:
o V.1: regarding the time and moments: it proposes that we have to observe well the time in which we are in and the various moments that affect our Christian life and vocation; the same thing is said also by Jesus to the scribes and Pharisees that they see the weather and clouds and know what is going to happen and more than that we have to observe the social situations, political conditions, false attractions that surround us and be attentive in order not to fall into them; therefore we have to keep open our eyes and our hearts to see them and to examine their authenticity;
o V. 2: the day of the Lord: we do not know its time and its moment; what we know certainly is that it will come and we will certainly meet it and the important aspect is in what condition we are going to interact with it. More than that, the day of the Lord is today itself for thus sings the Psalmist: ‘this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it’. Thus waiting for the day of the Lord which comes in the hour we do not know is one thing; and living everyday as the ‘day of the Lord’ giving it its importance and its glory with our committed life and thus be prepared for it every moment of our life is another thing; For the time of the Apostle Paul, the first one was apt because they were negligent and lazy thinking that the Lord will not come so soon and that they could enjoy and pass the life in the indifference; but for our times, that is, for us today, the second one is important because we are called to ‘make every day fruitful with the works of the Lord’ and thus give him the glory;
o Vv.4-6: we are the children of the day and of the light: we are no more the children of the night or darkness because the powers of evil and deeds of darkness were vanished from our life with the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Sacraments, specially of Baptism, Eucharist and Confirmation; from that day, the day of our rebirth in Christ and in Church we are made the children of the Light (Jesus is the light of the world) and the children of the Day (the Day of all days is the Resurrection of Jesus and therefore we are people of new life). For this we are called to ‘do away with the life of egoism and pride’ and ‘enter into the life of love of God and of neighbors’. This is what is called ‘living’ the day of the Lord.

Gospel:

- Biblical Context of the Parable of the Talents:
o This parable is proper to Mathew and it is, like its precedent parable of the ten virgins, has a rich and strong sense: fructifying the proper talents and multiplying the proper and personal capacities. Though we may find this universal wisdom anywhere, here in the Gospel it is treated in a different way;
o Even here we have two stages of the origin of the parable:
 When Jesus, before initiating his passion, has narrated this story to his disciples, he has done it to announce them of his departure from this world and he gives them all that he has, all the talents he has entrusted to them, they are: his mission, his life and continuation of his work of the kingdom of God; with this he keeps in clear evidence the great responsibility of the disciples: they are the continuators of the opera (work) of Jesus, and each one with his proper capacity.
 In the Gospel of Mathew this parable is presented in the context of certain situation in which his community was in the troubles and the problems of negligence of common responsibility and laziness in giving testimony to the Gospel of Christ, just like a third servant of the Gospel who has buried and hidden his talent and thus remained indifferent to his task. Therefore, presenting to this particular contextual community, Mathew indicates how the master treats the servant who is ‘wicked and lazy’ with the serious condemnation and by this Mathew encourages his community to be attentive and to actively participate in the Christian vocation and specially making double the fruits of the work entrusted to them.
o The attitude of the third servant: this servant has safely hidden his talent; and so when we think in the humanly way this seems to be a prudent act; but the grave mistake is ‘NOT KNOWING’ (failure to discern the use of the talent and work with it) what to do with the gifts entrusted; he has not treated well the ‘goods of the kingdom of God’. The Good News cannot be buried; the Gospel cannot be hidden; the Word cannot be blocked; because it is a ‘power of salvation’ and therefore it has to be diffused, otherwise it becomes barren without bearing any fruit. The disciples and the Church has to continue multiplying and fructifying the ‘goods’ of the God’s kingdom with the untiring work and risk. This is the central message proclaimed by this parable.
o Understanding few important words:
 Talents (v. 15): the original meaning of the talent is not a personal capacity as we think but in the biblical sense it is ‘a measure of weight’: 34 kilos of either gold or silver or any kind of precious metal. Therefore, it is a ‘sum of valuable good’ that weighs 34 kilos: in a word, it is a ‘considerable sum’. Later on, the parable is read and reflected in the significance of ‘personal capacities’ with which one is entrusted. Therefore, there is a need to make bear fruit the proper goods and thus develop them for the common well being.
 Traded with them (v.16): the master has not said anything about what to do with the gifts given; he has just given them and went away; there is no command of doing something; there is neither some indication that they should not do anything; he has left to the one who has received to do whatever he wants; only when its value is considered the first two servants went and traded with them and have doubled them with their prudent and wise commitment even at the cost of risking of losing everything;
From the good sense of the parable we can understand that the third servant has done well by preserving it safely and not to take risk and lose it so that he would be empty-handed when the moment of accounts come; but thing is: this is not the actual problem; the image used totally different: not the economic valuation but ‘quality of the work/risk that has to be put in developing it’.
 Little and More (v.21): the recompense cannot be measured according to the talents entrusted which are already considerably valuable; the teaching is near to that of Math 13:23 – “But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” – and the teaching is: the kingdom of god is infinitely above the talents entrusted in view of their perfect realization.
 I know (v.24): main problem of the third servant lies here; he has already misconceptions of the master; if he would have returned the talent as it is, master’s punishment would have been far more little and his attitude towards him would have been completely different; but the servant expresses all his ‘false understanding’ of the master; the only talent being taken away from him and being thrown into the darkness is the consequence ‘not of not working with the talent’ alone and only, but more than that, his indifferent behavior;
In the community of Mathew this kind of behavior was taking dominance and especially in the moment of persecutions and during the long awaiting for the Lord some were acting like the third servant; they have gone to the extent of doubting the message of Jesus and hiding and blocking it, instead of extending it far and more.

- Spiritual interpretation: ‘Embracing the work of the kingdom of God’
o Though at the beginning this parable gives us an impression that it is legated to the economic and capitalistic sphere, the accent is made on the ‘working’/trading, and the multiplying/fructifying of the mission entrusted.
o This theme is specified ‘not on the accounts calculated by the master’, rather, it is based on the judgment he pronounces to the two parties: to the party of the good and faithful servants: ‘take part in the joy of your master’ and to the party of wicked and lazy servant: ‘throw him out into the darkness’.
o The important point here is not the simple task of developing the proper talents or one’s own talents: because each one of us is endowed with the special gifts and potentialities and we take pride in growing with our personal capabilities; that’s fine. BUT the more accentuated or convincing discourse is not just this and it goes beyond this: ‘the master entrusts HIS properties, his goods and his mission’; we have to keep in mind of the ‘talents of the kingdom of God’ that are entrusted to us: the Christian Faith with all the liturgy and sacraments and the Christian Way with all its thorns of sufferings, stones of temptations and finally with the Force and Power of the Holy Spirit to win over them.
o ‘Wisdom is Our Aid – Prudence is our armor’: since the master has just entrusted to us his properties and his belonging – the work of the kingdom and the grace of salvation – without giving any instructions or indications of what to do and how to go about the given task, it is the duty and responsibility of the receiver to discern and decide what has to be done. At this juncture of confusion and helplessness our recourse is ‘the wisdom’ and ‘prudence’ ( the summary of the first reading – woman at work and vocation is the personification of wisdom of God) and we have to run towards our Helper, our Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Master himself sends us to understand the truth of the salvific work, because only with and in Him we understand what to do with the talents of Jesus given to us and because ‘both wisdom and prudence’ are his gifts to the mankind.
o The first two servants have immediately understood the task and kept themselves at work of trading and multiplying because they have trusted, with the grace of the Spirit, their master to be generous and kind and as the one who entrusts to them the work to make it fructify; instead, the third one, because of his wicked understanding of the master and his personal laziness for work, neglected the aid of the Spirit and went on to do his own way and he could not find any other way than hiding it and burying it; and the result is only ‘for the manifestation of their attitude towards the master and his goods’: the joy of the master for the faithful servants and the condemnation of life for the unfaithful servants;
o ‘Treasure Has to Be Shared’: the sin of Adam (or the first parents) is not just eating the fruit of the banned tree but it is more than that: it is ‘hiding’ from the presence of the Lord which indicates also ‘burying’ the love and friendship of the Lord for and with them. God’s Goods (the Kingdom), God’s Word (Jesus Christ) and God’s Power (the Holy Spirit) cannot be buried and hidden; they are entrusted to the Christian community to live them, to work with them, to multiply them and to share them with the others by trading with them; Jesus himself tells about the kingdom as the ‘hidden treasure’ but to be found and be owned by the genuine and authentic searcher of the it (Math 13:44).
The same questions will be asked by the master: ‘Adam where are you and why are you hiding?’ and ‘Wicked and Lazy servant why did you hide my treasure?’. We have to also face the same questions if we act like Adam: ‘hiding ourselves from His presence’ or if we act like the third servant: ‘hiding all that we are entrusted, such as, the faith and the sacraments and the liturgy, in the ground making them/considering them as useless’. Are we ready to give an account for such type of behavior or for the similar attitude we manifest many times in our life?
o Answer is ours! No one takes our responsibility. No one talks for us. No one stands by us in the moment of the judgment. We have to give an answer. We have to put forward our accounts. We have to show the balance sheet to the master.
Whether we work for it and multiply it and receive the share of joy of heavens or we neglect it and be indifferent and thus receive the eternal darkness. Everything is in Us and We are the Responsible for our actions; Let us be attentive and always at work!

Conclusion:

- Each one of has a special task for the kingdom of God:
o For the Lord each one of us is very important and to each one he has entrusted a particular work to multiply and magnify the kingdom of love and peace; each one has a special place in the mind and heart of God: because
o Each one is a unique person because there was never before and is now or will be after us a person who is similar to us;
o Our importance and our value is so much that we have to be always mindful of our presence and purpose in the world: a book is not complete if even one full-stop or coma is missing in it; seashore is not complete if even one grain of sand is missing in it; so also, the world is not full and complete if you are missing in it; because it needs you and it accepts your presence as a precious one and therefore, we need to understand the design of God for us and live for it;
o He has created each one of us in his image and likeness, he has carved our form even before falling to the womb of our mother and he has written our name on His palms and so important we are for him; did we ever ask why God has done so much for me? The answer is simple: He Love You; that’s why he has formed you, called you, chosen you and finally saved you to be with him forever. Therefore, we have to work hard and with committed enthusiasm for his purpose and for his kingdom;
- Boat is not made to be on the Shore:
o The boat on the shore looks beautiful and it is safe if it is always on the shore but the purpose of the boat is not to be on the shore but to travel in the waters: so also nice that we, often, keep ourselves on the safer side without taking any risk in our Christian life: keeping ourselves away from the living of our faith; it is safer that we just go to the church and pray and remains as a good Christians;
o But, the purpose of our Christian life is different and higher than just being good Christians and we have to go further to trade with the ‘goods of the Lord’ that we have received from him – the mission and vocation of testimony – and face the challenges with risk and courage and above all ‘with the wisdom and prudence’ of the Holy Spirit.
o We have to be the boats on the waters, not the boats on the shore: we have travel always forward in our Christian life sharing (trading) the gifts entrusted to us (the precious treasure of the kingdom values) with all and thus multiplying them and fructifying them (leading all to the knowledge and love of God);
o Because the time is coming for us to present ourselves to the Lord: as good and faithful servants so that we have the share in the joy of our Master. For this on one side, we have to be awake and ready and on the other side, we have to be always at work of the our faith – in a word – let us prepare ourselves to be in front of the Lord as ‘good and faithful servant’ in the smallness of our life.

THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A

THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A
(Wisdom 6:12-16; Psalm 62; 1 Thess 4:13-18; Math 25:1—13)

Theme: We shall present ourselves awake and ready to be With Him

Reflection:

- With the readings of today, the Church, asks us to keep ourselves ‘awake’ and ‘ready’ always in order to meet the Bridegroom who comes in the day and in the time that we do not know and because the meeting of the Lord and being with Him is the destiny of our Christian life and faith;
- Jesus’ intention to tell this that unlike Scribes and Pharisees who were acting/living for the vainglory we should live and act for the glory of the Lord; this was the summary of the last week’s readings: ‘we are called to be coherent and integral in our life and testimony’. Those, Scribes and Pharisees, who were given the law and who were supposed to be living it and transmitting it through their testimony have not done it; it was their task and responsibility as the people called and chosen by God; but they have not done it; instead, they were doing it for their own name and fame and specially to be seen by the people; they were masking their life with hypocrisy and this was that made Jesus angry with them and thus he has denounced them from the kingdom of God;
- Unlike them, we are called to live with the coherence and with integrity between what we say and what we do and thus between our words and our actions; we have remind ourselves often and always that it is our Christian vocation and mission to live for the Lord and not for our selfish motive and auto-glory;
- In the continuation of this Jesus asks us to be awake and to be ready in every moment of our life:
o First of all, for the reason that we are in the final pages of the Gospel in which Jesus asks us make a real choice to accept and embrace his will; we are also in the final days of the conclusion of the Liturgical Year A and therefore, by offering these pages of the Gospel the Church demands us that we should ‘prepare ourselves with the light of faith and oil of love to meet Jesus whenever he comes;
o Secondly, for the reason that we should not be floated away with the negligence of the law of Jesus, the love and we should not live for the public applause but for the crown of joy which will be given to us for the life we live with the balance and commitment;
o Thirdly and finally, for the simple reason that we are in the grade of knowing the day and the hour in which Jesus will come; the day of his coming is unknown and the hour of his return is uncertain; therefore, the Church calls us today with the inspiration and the force of the readings to ‘know’ and ‘choose’ the path of Him with the wisdom which is always at our disposal;

First Reading

- Wisdom is always accessible:
o First of all, we should know the difference between wisdom and knowledge; very often both look alike but in reality and in concreteness they are different and they signify quite a different reality:
 Knowledge: to know a thing which is not known to us earlier; it is wonderful moment and movement to get the knowledge of the new elements or aspects; it is the work of the mind which studies deeper into the reality of a thing and finally know its nature and its being;
 Wisdom: wisdom on the other hand is not just knowing; it presupposes the knowledge and at the same time goes beyond it; its process does not stop with knowing the nature and the being of a new thing; since it goes beyond the knowledge it is not the work of the mind alone; it is the work of the heart/the spirit which decides to follow thoroughly and ultimately what is found;
 From the above definitions it is clear that: the knowledge is the work of the mind and the wisdom is the work of the heart; the mind thinks but the heart does; the mind starts but the heart completes; the mind knows and the heart follows;
o This wisdom is always at our disposition: it is we who have to see it and take it to ourselves; the first reading makes it clear to us:
 The wisdom is available and it makes itself at the reach: but only to the one who knows it as radiant and flawless and more than that who is in the journey of research: vv. 12-13:
• To the one who loves it;
• To the one who searches for it;
• And to the one who desire it;
 It has to be the important and prior reality that we should search for: vv. 14-15:
• We should wake up early in the morning only with the thought and will of searching for the wisdom; we may have hundred and one things to do in the day but the first thing, as the Christian faith demands, to do is to search for it: wisdom in none other than the Will of God;
• It is there always at the door of our life: we need only to open the door and see it sitting at the door-step making itself closer to us; the one who opens the door of faith finds it and asks it to enter in; in other words: ‘to open the door and making it to enter in’ means that the wisdom always provides us a possibility of life and the possibility of faith; we only need to invite it inside and thus we are invited to make use of the given opportunity and the possibility so that we are enlightened to be with it and it is with us: wisdom is none other than the presence of Jesus who said: ‘I abide in him and he abides in Me’ (John 6:56);
 The wisdom makes us to see the presence and the action of God in every instant of our life; it makes us see his will in every place we are in and in every interior activity that we intend to do; it makes us to distinguish between the life of superficiality and indifference and the life of great values and authentic living: therefore, wisdom is none other than the power of the Holy Spirit who makes us know the reality and one who ‘leads us to the Truth’ (John 16:13);
 Therefore, wisdom is the ‘presence and the work’ of the Trinity: the will of the Father, the acceptance of the Son and the power of the Spirit. Once we search for it and find it and finally, invite it into our life then, we become children of God the Trinity;

The Responsorial Psalm: my soul is thirsty of the Lord

- Christian Soul thirsts for the Lord:
o the Psalmist is very eager and enthusiastic to experience the presence of the Lord in him and thus to have the joy and life; that’s the reason why he composes and sings this song of his soul; his soul is waiting for the Lord; his soul is thirsting for the Lord; his soul is full of hunger for the Lord;
o therefore, what he does early in the morning is quite interesting to note; what is his first thing of the day is very inspiring for all those who want to be in the Lord and for the Lord; he sings: “O God, you are my God, at the dawn I search for you”: we may note two things here: one is that of ‘accepting God as his God’ and second is that of ‘searching for him from the dawn’. Finally, this ‘acceptance and the constant search’ becomes the ‘food’ and ‘drink’ of the day for the Psalmist;
o and, every Christian soul, every one of us, has to take the example of this Psalmist and search for the Lord every day and that should be our ‘food and drink’ and that should be ‘our will and action’ and that should be ‘our life’ itself; even Jesus confirms that ‘doing the will of His Father is his food and drink’.
- God is greater and valuable than our life itself:
o Our life, be human or spiritual, values more than anything else in the world; it is more than food and drink; it is more than the daily struggles; it is more than the desires of the world; it is more than anything – be it power, possessions and prestige; such a significance and value has our life;
o The Psalmist says that even our life is not valuable than the grace of God for he says, ‘your grace values more than life’; that’s what even the Lord assures St. Paul: ‘my grace is enough for you’. With this grace we can do anything in life and we can conquer life from the bondages of sin and worldly attractions; therefore, once we seek the grace we have everything in life; psalmist knows it well and therefore he seeks for the grace (wisdom) of God;
o We are asked today to do the same; to listen and to follow Psalmist and thus become the ‘searchers of the Wisdom’, and of the Lord our God;

Second Reading

- We are not the people of ignorance but of hope:
o The Gospel stands between ‘the wisdom’ and ‘the hope’ and it is Gospel that shows us the path towards choosing the wisdom and to be firm in the hope; the second reading teaches the same;
o St. Paul exclaims this in today’s passage from the first letter to the Thessalonians: ‘we do not want to leave you in ignorance’ (v.13);
o The wisdom is to see the reality and accept it and the Hope is to consistently wait for its realization in our life;
o ‘we believe indeed that Jesus is died and risen again’: this expression of faith is a wisdom which makes us to see and accept the reality that the death is only a door-step to the life just because we believe that Jesus, our Master, himself has passed from the earthly reality of death to the eternal reality of life; therefore, this is the work of the wisdom;
o ‘we believe also that those who have died, God will gather them through and with Jesus’: this expression of faith is a hope which makes us to live the reality of our life so that one day we will be able to participate in the life that God restores for us; therefore, this is the work of the hope;
o There is no place for ignorance because we know the reality in wisdom and live it in hope;

Gospel

- Biblical interpretation: ‘Here comes the Bridegroom and go out and meet him’
o With the wonderful nuptial parable of the ten virgins wise and imprudent comes out immediately a pair of antithesis of symbols: the awake and the sleep:
 The sleep alludes to the spiritual torpor, to the coldness and to the inactivity;
 The status of being waken is an index of readiness, tension, operating love and intelligence;
 Even Paul exhorts that we have to be the children of light: “we do not sleep like others, but we shall be awake and vigilant” (1Thess 5:6);
 When the voice of the bridegroom is heard, we need to be anxious and attentive;
o The antithesis of ‘awake’ and ‘sleep’ have as their effects in the symbolism of ‘darkness’ and ‘light’:
 The night or darkness is a moment of the trial and of obscurity of the hope that at the dawn God appears again as light;
 The light of the lantern which extinguishes the night or darkness is a sign of life, of joy, of interact with the bridegroom;
o The door which closed is again a symbolism of the word of the bridegroom ‘I do not know you’:
 Behind the closed door the nuptial banquet is celebrated: that is the sharing of joy, of intimacy and of communion; this is the sign of messianic salvation that is offered to the faithful, to the poor and to the just ones (Math 25:21,23; Math 8:11-12); being kept out from this life of joy is the symbolism of the closed door;
 Behind the closed door, the face of the bridegroom is changed into the face of the judge who will open the door not to invite the outsiders but only to judge them because their ignorance and rejection of wisdom and moreover because of their lack of proper preparation to meet him.
- Exegetical interpretation: keep your light always enkindled with the oil of love
o From the beginning of the chapter 24, Mathew develops a teaching on the end of the times. In this line he re-reads the parable of Jesus and utilizes it in the sense of ‘await for the return of Christ’; the Greek text starts with ‘in that time’ which connects the parable that is precedent (24:45-51). Also the phrase of verse 13 is in the direct echo of 24:42;
o Therefore, we can consider the text in two levels: as happening many times in the parables (chapter 13) and that is of Jesus which teaches ‘to be ready to the appeal of God’ and that is of Mathew which teaches ‘to be vigilant’ in the awaiting of the return of the Lord which is still distant: let us consider little more:
 The parable in the time of Jesus: Jesus wanted to pose a question to his listeners on a fact of everyday life: that is the celebration of matrimony in a village. All the invited girls have to wait, until the night passes that they finish of speaking of the family of the husband; when it is signaled they participate to be in their proper post; for this reason they have to prepare well everything; what can we think of those imprudent virgins who were not there – ready – to meet the bridegroom? What happens then? The whole village would laugh at them: when one is invited he has to arrive at the stabilized hour; from the context Jesus wanted to tell his audience: apply the same principle to your life and situation; you are also called for a great event; see that you don’t miss it; therefore, there is here an urgent invitation for the conversion as in the many gospel parables;
 The parable in the time of Mathew: when Mathew receives this parable from the oral tradition, he gives it a meaning by placing it with the relation to Jesus and to the Church: Christ is the Bridegroom of the New Alliance. We wait for his return but his return is late; Mathew writes his gospel in the time of the second generation Christians and thus he has to create a space for the people to think that the return of Jesus will not come tomorrow; in the problem of the question: when will he come again? What is the time of his return? Mathew answers them to wait and not to sleep and there is still to be done as it was taught by the parable of the faithful servant (24:45-51) and as will be developed by the parable of the talents (25:14-30), the two parables between which is placed this parable;
 V.3: the lantern: is the classical image to indicate the vigilance, the perseverance and the fidelity and we can find this also in Luke 12:35;
 V.5: All the virgins: the reference is made to all the virgins be it wise or imprudent; and all of them were sleeping and therefore this indicates that the teaching on the vigilance is not here;
 V.9: the wise virgins: many say that they are little selfish because they were not ready to share their oil with them; but here we need not pose the false problems saying that they are charitable in their dealing with the imprudent ones because the moral teaching of the parable is not here still; each has to be vigilant in the waiting for the Lord; no one is to be in the place of the other; each has his play and each has his role; no one should interfere with the other because each one is called to prepare and to participate in the banquet of the Bridegroom; the wise virgins have attentively directed their life toward the return of Christ and thus they are ready to greet him.
 V.11: the rebuke made to the imprudent virgins is not that they are vigilant; but more than that they failed to have with them the proper and necessary dispositions to be ready at the right time; the opposition between those who entered and those remained outside is to be compared to 24:41 – “one will be taken away and the other is left behind”;
 V.12: I do not know you: the same sense of 7:23; go away from me: the citation of Ps 6:9; doing the evil (operators of iniquity), here and in 13:41, are equivalent to ‘not doing the will of the Father’ (7:21). We can see also Luke 13:25-27.
 V.13: keep awake: is retaken from 24:42; Mathew, writing to community of his time, makes its proper use to the conclusion of his discourse on the coming of the Son of Man. He insists on the perseverance “because you do not know either the day or the hour”.
- Spiritual meaning: be ready to enter before the door is closed
o The door at the entrance of which was sitting the wisdom (first reading) is the possibility of knowing and accepting the plan of God that each Christian soul has to search for it every morning (second reading);
o Once the door is closed, that is, once the possibility of life, the opportunity of grace or the hour of meeting is closed, (or lost or missed), there is nothing of us to do than crying out ‘outside’;
o Once the door is closed we are left outside in the darkness and in the night and thus in the possibility of destruction;
o We should be ready, therefore, to enter in when the door is opened; indeed, we have to keep ourselves, as the Gospel passage demands, awake and vigilant so that whatever moment the coming of the bridegroom be, we have all the chances of going in along with him and to be with him sharing the joy of the wedding;
o There is no use of crying from out ‘Lord, open to us the door’ or ‘Lord, give us another chance’ or ‘Lord, bear with us this time out of your mercy’; no cries will reach into the wedding hall because there is a ‘sound of joy and shouts of happiness’ inside and our cries remain unheard and unnoticed;
o Therefore, finally, the only possible way for us is ‘to keep awake, to be vigilant, to be perseverant’ (the Gospel) and ‘to search for the wisdom that guides us to see the hand and the will of God in every action of our life’ (the first reading) and finally, ‘to dispel our ignorance and to live in hope’ of meeting the Lord one day (the second reading).

Conclusion

- We have to present ourselves to Jesus:
o With all the required dispositions such as: to keep ourselves at the door of faith (wisdom), with the lamp of hope (vigilance) and with the oil of love (awake);
o Like a wise virgins who have prepared themselves well and who, though asleep, when the sound of the Lord has reached them, have been awake; ‘blessed is the servant who is found awake when the master returns’ and he will be given a share in his possessions.
- We have to prepare ourselves well to meet Him:
o It is not enough to come to the church - because even the imprudent virgins have come - to meet the Lord, but it is more important to come prepared and with good disposition – like that of the wise virgins who have finally – met the Lord; therefore, coming to the house of the Lord is not all but coming with prepared heart to listen to him and to receive him so that we are in him and he is in us and that is the actual and true meaning of ‘meeting him’.
o Because we are not aware of the day or the hour in which he comes but ‘blessed are we if we are found prepared’.
o Because we have to keep ourselves ‘awake’ from the desires of darkness, which world would offer us in good quantity, so that we do not fall into their sleep and so we have the possibility of ‘keeping our faith’ (with vigilance) in the ‘good actions’ (with love) of everyday life.
o Therefore, we have to be present ‘with preparedness and perfection’ to meet the Lord who comes.

THIRTY FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

THIRTY FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A:
(Mal 1:14-2:1-2,8-10; 1Thess 2:7-9,13; Math 23:1-12)

Theme: We are called to live with coherence and integrity our life and our testimony

Reflection:

- Last Sunday we have reflected upon the commitment and dedicated life we should have by loving God and loving neighbor, the two principle commandments which are built one on the other and one exposes and completes the other: God’s love to be built upon the love of the neighbor because if we are not able to love our neighbor whom we can see, we cannot love God whom we cannot see (1 Jn 4:20); and on the way, neighbor’s love to be for the exposition and completion of God’s love because God made himself ‘an ordinary man taking human flesh’ to be our neighbor and to give a meaning for the love of the neighbor;
- Today we are called, as we have already themed, to have a coherent and integral life: that is, we need to demonstrate the balance between what we say and what we do, between our words and our actions, between our prayers and our practice, between our life of faith and our life of testimony; without this coherence and integrity we are not full and we are perfect; we only show the one side of the coin of our life leaving the other side in the dark or hidden; we only testify one part of life keeping aside the other part in the in cold box; in one word and as the gospels put it, we become liars and hypocrites;
- Jesus calls us to be attentive to an attitude of this kin (the first verses of today’s gospel); to be attentive means ‘to see and to observe and to act accordingly’; Jesus calls his disciples just to see and observe and not to act as the scribes and Pharisees and the reason for this is ‘the hypocrisy’ they demonstrate in their life with their ‘authoritative word’ and with their failure to ‘practice what they preach’ – the exact words of Jesus help us to understand this – “for they do not practice what they teach” (v.3). Hence Jesus calls us to be, unlike them, a people who can transform their words into actions, their prayers into works, and their celebrations into the occasions of love.

First Reading:

- Prophet Malachi and Prophecy to the Priests:
o Prophet Malachi is one of the twelve small prophets and is not known or not so familiar like others; Malachi means most probably ‘an announce of the Lord’; though each and every prophet is called to be the mouth of the Lord and the predicator of the word of God, Malachi by his name becomes himself ‘an announce of the Lord’.
o Though he is less notable than other prophets, his voice is firm and without hesitations: he directs his message with lot of vehemence to those who have occupied the post of guidance and responsibility and they are the priests and the Levites of his time; because he denounces them and warns them in the name of the Lord who has made him a prophet because these people who have to be ‘the guide to the people’ and the ‘responsible in their task’, have become hypocrites and thus have reduced the true adoration to a mere and exterior ritualism and have made their community responsibility into the play for fulfilling their private interests;
o We can see the gravity of their failure in the two ‘grave sins’:
 Forgetting the truth of being the priests of God they have walked away from the His presence and neglected the authenticity of their call: “you have turned aside from the way” (v.8);
 Less worse they have blocked the people from their offering of cult to God and they have led the people also astray with their wrong teachings: “you have caused many to stumble by your instruction” (v.8);
 The totality of their sins consisted in their failure to give ‘glory to the name of the Lord’: they are called to be the true priests of the Lord by their faithful offering of the sacrifices to God and by their authentic teaching of God’s word to the people; instead they have not as demanded from them for their being priests and that’s what made God to pronounce the judgment and a word of condemnation if they are do not do the required: “If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse on you and I will curse your blessings” (v.2).
- Time of curse also for the priests:
o ‘And Now’ (2:2): there is time also for the condemnation of priests; though there the chosen ones and consecrated ones, just because of their being anointed, they would not escape the judgment of the Lord unless they keep themselves faithful to their call and ministry until the end;
o There is time for everyone to be judged and given the retribution according to their attitude and response to the call and to their proper vocation; no one can escape God’s eye and God’s voice; everyone falls into his word and action at the appointed time;
o “And Now” is the appointed time for the priests who were leading the people in the wrong path with their false teachings and who were utilizing the ‘simple and common people’ like poor and widows for their own selfish motives; now is the time for them to face the judgment which they have bought with their own ‘wrong words’ and ‘false actions’;
o Until now God has extended his word and his law to the common people through the mouth of the prophets and through the cult of the priests, now it is time for the priests to be tested for their attitude to the same word and the same law and that’s why God speaks through Malachi exclusively to the priests: “And now, O priests, this command is for you” (v. 2:1);
- Everyone has an ‘appointed time’ for his answer
o This only shows as already indicated that each member of the ‘community of God’, be it its priests or be it its simple member, has to answer, one day, in front of God for his words and actions;
o If there is no coherence and integrity between ‘what he says and what he does’, then he has to be responsible and to be ready to face the consequence that God would give as a recompense.


Second Reading:

- Paul and his mission: to be tender and motherly in the work
o Paul brings about an image which is very dear to the Bible (example: Ps 130/131) and very dear to Jesus himself (John 16:21) and that is of the mother (v.7); though we see the word ‘nurse’ in the English translation of RSV (like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children, v.7), the translation that is little more closer to the original Greek translation uses the word ‘mother’ (as a mother nourishes and has the care of her proper creatures); more than a nurse it is mother who shows tenderness to her children; and Paul says that the Apostle or the minister of the Lord has to be ‘so’ in his mission of transmitting the word;
o He expresses his desire of offering the total self for the people who have become dear to him; it is, in other words, giving his life for his people as in the parable of Good Shepherd of Jesus; his beautiful words help us understand better: “So deeply we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us” (v.8);
o Sharing the Gospel and Sharing the very self have become closely linked and connected; the Gospel of Christ has become the ‘person himself’; Paul still goes further saying that the Apostle has to be a mother who not only communicates to her children all her valuable gifts she possesses, that is, the Gospel, but also and above all her life itself.
- Communication of the Gospel and Communication of the Person
o Once again it is clear that Gospel message of Christ has to become the very person; once the minister accepts the call of Jesus and comes forward to fulfill his vocation of preaching, he has to make the message his own and thus proclaim not just a word but a life itself;
o For Paul, who has already said that ‘it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20), it is the life that is preached and it is the person, which is both the word and action, that is communicated;
o The preaching of the Gospel becomes authentic and perfect only when the word is proclaimed not by the tongue/mouth but by the heart/life. Jesus himself is a model for this: He is no longer a Word but a Word became Man (in incarnation) and a Word became an Act of salvation (in paschal mystery). Thus he has become the Gospel proclamation and proclaimed.
o The Gospel transformed into the Living Person; the word is not preached but witnessed; the word not heard but seen; this means, thus, being coherent and integral in the life and in the witness.

Gospel:

- The general context of the passage: Jesus admonishes the Scribes and Pharisees:
o The chapter 23 of Mathew comes immediately after the chapter (22) full of meaning: that starts with the parable of the Wedding Banquet (vv.1-14) in which we reflect that the Lord has prepared a banquet for all and he has sent invitation to all to participate but the invitees, not accepting the call and going away with their own business and with their personal motives; and the invitation is sent again, this time, not to those who were called before, but to all that are on the roads and once they are brought to the wedding hall they have to have a ‘wedding garment’ (faith) to enter and participate in the banquet; if the faith is not manifested then there is no place for banqueting; then we have question of the paying taxes (vv. 15-22) in which Jesus reminds us that we have the commitment to offer to God his proper glory and we have also the responsibility for the growth of the earthly society because as Christians we are to witness the kingdom of God on earth by working for it and that is the summary of it: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s”; and finally the chapter concludes with the ‘Great commandment’ (vv. 34-40) of love of God and the love of the neighbor in the one and the same love;
o The chapter is also immediately followed by the Eschatological discourse of Jesus with the chapter 24 in which Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple that would take place soon, the signs that would appear at the end of the age and the watchfulness that the man has to have to attend them and to be alert to accept them;
o Between these two chapters falls the present chapter of 23: it a chapter dedicated by Mathew to speak of the Scribes and Pharisees and to admonish them for their un-exemplary life they live;
o Like in the first reading also Mathew presents a controversial attitude of Jesus towards the religious authorities of his time who without being true to their call and vocation have gone away from the path of God and making the common people also burdened with imposition of the unnecessary laws which they have made for their own selfish purposes;
o Jesus after revealing the mystery of the kingdom of God to the people in the kind words and loving action and thus in the form of parables and in the form of miracles, NOW, just before his passion and death, he raises his tone and his volume in a manner little more harsh than normal and admonished them against the Pharisees and scribes just because they have not done justice to their call.
- The exegetical explanation: Jesus drawing the attention of his followers towards the attitude of the Scribes and Pharisees:
o Vv. 1-3: Moses and the authority of Jesus time: the Scribes and the Pharisees are the blessed ones because they are sitting on the chair of Moses, the law giver; they are the fortunate people because they are given the authority of transmitting the law of God to the people; it is blessed call and it is a holy vocation they are endowed with: they are the authentic interpreters of the law; and so it is always inside of Judaism; It is because of this reason that Jesus asks his disciples and followers to listen to them carefully and observe them thoroughly just because they are authentic teachers of the law and at the same time Jesus warns them to be away from their actions – because they do not practice what they preach and they have become ‘hypocrites’, the word Jesus uses very often in the following verses.
o Vv. 4-10: they have become more superficial and they have become more apparent in their behavior and in their attitude and in the particular way, in their propagation of the law: they have started seeking their self-glory and they started acting for their vain-glory and Jesus gives them the reasons why and how they have turned out to be:
 They started imposing the new interpretations of the authentic law on the people – as a heavy yoke on their shoulders to carry – so that in their failure to follow them they demand some goods from them for their own stomachs: this could be also called, in our language, playing with the hunger of the poor. In this way they have neglected to transmit the true law given by Moses;
 On the other hand, Jesus, the giver of the New Law of Love, provides them the yoke that is light and easy to carry (Math 11:28ff); that is of humility and meekness; this is the central problem which existed always between the Judaism and Christianity and between the Law and the Gospel;
 Another reason why they are acting this way is to be admired and to be exalted by others; Jesus criticizes a defect that is almost inevitable in those who desire to be the model and example for the community; the defect here is seeking for the self-glory than committing oneself for the community;
 Another reason for their such behavior is that they wanted to be ‘Rabbi-Father-Master’ (7-10): they are in this way throwing away God from his throne and they want to occupy it themselves; they are in this way acting contrary to the will of God who is the Only Rabbi, the Only Father and the Only Master;
o Vv. 11-12: Christian has to be contrary to the world’s thoughts: Jesus does not stop his discourse of warning his disciples and his followers to be watchful on the attitude of their leaders who act falsely, but he also exhorts them not to chose their paths: “But you are not to be” (v.8). In elevating them still more in their choice of following Him, Jesus tells to take him as their example: “The great among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (vv. 11-12); before telling them to be a servant and to be humble, He made himself a servant and humble (Phil 2:6-10); this is the difference between Jesus, the True Master and the Scribes, the false teacher because Jesus says and does and does what he says and the false teachers only say what they intend but do not practice what they say;
- The meaning of the passage for us today as we hear it: Be for Jesus and Be through Jesus;
o We are elevated in our life to imbibe the attitude of Jesus, who is meek and humble, who is servant and obedient and who is last of all and least of all; we are to learn the same kind of mentality;
o In order to learn this: the first thing we have to do is to be attentive to the false teaching and inauthentic actions of our times: specially to the attractive but unreasonable instructions of some religions on one hand and in internal sense, to the non coherent attitude of leaders – be it priests and any other minister – who say something and act differently;
o Though today’s Gospel is little harsh we need not take it in the letter sense but with the spirit with which Jesus has warned the people not to fall into the same kind of attitude and thus become hypocrites who lose the kingdom God and finally perish in their own pits;

Conclusion:

- More than the law, Gospel is important; More than Moses, Jesus important; more than the words, actions are important; more than the prayers, practicing is important; more than preaching, testimony is important: as Pope Paul VI says ‘we need witnesses, not the teachers’.
- It does not mean that we have throw away into dustbin or we have to neglect the law, the words, the prayers, the preaching and finally Moses and the prophets; they are the foundation and they serve as the basis for the authentic living; if the first ones are not there, the second ones have no completion; therefore we need to take into consideration both of them and giving little more importance to the living part of it.
- Are we really True Christians or are we hypocrites? This question should be authentically answered today as we listen to the word and receive the nourishment of the Eucharist; this is the question which we should keep on asking in every instance of witnessing our faith and our life; only then the exhortation of Jesus for us today, as it was for his disciples and followers, has meaning and its destiny in us and for us;
- Finally, we have to keep in mind always that we speak not by words but by actions, we preach not by lips but by heart and we testify not by talk but by love because we are called to live with coherence and integrity our Christian life.

THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A
(Ex 22:20-26; 1 Thes 1:5c-10; Math 22:34-40)

Theme: we are the bearers of love for God and for our neighbor

Reflection:

- The Gospel of the last Sunday helped us to understand that we are called not only for giving glory to God with the liturgy and prayers but also for building his kingdom of peace, justice and love through our active participation in the social and community responsibility; that’s what Jesus means when he asks us to give to God what belongs to God, that is his glory, and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, that is social task. We need to strike the balance between the prayer and practice, between the reading the Good News of the Scripture and giving the good life to others, between desiring for the kingdom of God to come on earth and making it realize in our midst by our actions, and finally between raising our hands to God in vertical dimension and extending our hands to our neighbors in the horizontal dimension and thus making a cross in life and living a life of cross; that’s exactly what Christ has done on the cross: offering himself to God in the symbolism of the vertical piece and pouring out of his body and blood for the salvation of the humanity in the symbolism of the horizontal piece on which he has opened his arms to embrace all.
- In today’s Gospel, as the continuation of the last week’s, we have the commandment of love: one commandment with two directions: Love for God in the vertical direction and for the neighbor in horizontal direction; and both these have a ‘meeting point’ in Christ’s love manifested in his fulfillment of His Father’s will and the salvation of all men and perfectly accomplished on the cross. Therefore, our love either for God or for the neighbor or for both together has the starting point in Jesus Christ, Love of God for humanity; this once again shows that we are called to bear the love of God by our spiritual renewal and the love of our neighbor (society or the community) by our presence and cooperation.

First Reading:

- Precept of same measurement (treatment): give the love if you want to receive love:
o Today’s first reading is taken from the series of social-ethical teachings, extracted from the ‘code of the alliance’ on the Mount Sinai (Ex 20:22-23”19);
o Three classes of the citizens who are under the domination of the privileged of the Holy Land: the stranger, the orphan and the widow; these three categories of people do not have the ‘defender’ and they are easily maltreated and used by the citizens because of their helplessness (stranger), poverty (orphan) and the loneliness (widow);
o The measure we measure is the measure we are measured with: it is the precept that is followed here and it is the social ethics that has to be dominant in treating others; God’s judgment will be according to their acts; He tells them to treat aliens well remembering their past status in which they were once upon a time aliens in the foreign land; He tells them to treat well the widows and the orphans because of the just judgment he would make against them also in which they also have the possibility of becoming widows and orphans; therefore, if we measure well, we will be also measured well; if we maltreat them, we will also be maltreated; if we condemn them, we will also be condemned; and positively, if we love them, we will also be loved;
- God himself takes the side of poor: for his love is equal for all
o God himself takes the place of defender for them; he has decided to bring them under his paternal guidance and for this reason the community has to surround them and embrace them with care and love;
o The heroes of the passage, the stranger, the widow and the orphan, have God himself as their Rock, Fortress and Liberator who becomes pitiless judge against those who attend to his protected ones with oppression (v.20), with maltreatments (v.21), with usury (v.24) and with the indifferences (25-26);
o In this way, God demonstrates to them the social task that each of the citizen should bear in mind and manifest in his action and in particular way ‘to God’s preferred ones’, that is, the least of the society or the maltreated of the community;

Second Reading:

- Leaving everything aside to embrace and to accept God:
o As we heard in the last week’s reflection, we have only one God and it is he who does everything in our life and we believe and accept this with our Christian faith;
o Once we give space to God in our life we have to renounce all other priorities and all other preoccupations with regard to our faith and action; we have to prostrate before the True and Living God offering our whole self to him in rendering him the glory in the worthy manner;
o The community of Thessalonica has done just this: it has given up all the gods whom they were worshipping as soon as they have come into contact with the message of Jesus Christ who has shown them the True and Ever-living and loving God: “you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God” (v.9);
- Imitating the messenger of Christ:
o The community of Thessalonica has imitated Paul with the enthusiasm of the faith (v.8) in the waiting for the coming of Christ (v.10);
o Acceptance of the messenger is the acceptance of the one who sent him: Jesus himself says that one who accepts him accepts the one who has sent him, his Father; believing in the messenger means believing also the one who has sent him; so also the imitation; in this way, Paul says that the community of Thessalonica has imitated him well in ‘infusing the word of God’ and in ‘giving authentic testimony’ to other and this way it has become also the imitator of Christ, its Lord: “be my imitators as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1);
- Being Model in the love of God and in the love of community:
o In accepting the word of God with the joy of the Spirit even in the midst of tribulations and sufferings, the Thessalonica has become model for the neighboring communities of Macedonia and Achaia (v. 6); in this embracing they have shown their love for God throwing away all their previous beliefs and their past practices of worshipping false gods;
o In testifying the faith with their words and with the witness of life, the community of Thessalonica has become also model for the love of neighbor because they have extended/offered them what they have received, the faith and love of God;
o We too are called to be ‘model community’ which pours out both love of God and of neighbor with our faith and charity;

Gospel:

- The greatest commandment: Love
o This is the central part in the conflict between Jesus and his adversaries. The question that is posed permits Jesus to proclaim the heart of the message clearly and perfectly: the Love
o V. 35: to put him to the test: once again a discourse raised by the Jewish authority to test Jesus and his message; they just came to know that Jesus has silenced the Herodians, the followers of Pharisees and they came this time with more intensity to trap him by asking him question in the law itself about which Jesus is thorough. We see a doctor of the Law coming to ask Jesus with the intention of catching Jesus in blasphemy and it is not the first time and there are diverse occasions (19:3; 22:15,18) in which they tried to find fault with Jesus; and Jesus gives a teaching that is very clear on the love of God and of neighbor; here we can see the continuity between the Old and New Testament, but it is Jesus himself who is at the centre of the commandment of love.
o V. 36-38: the doctor of the Law poses a question to Jesus on the ‘greatest commandment’, the expression which is proper only to Mathew. Jesus answers enumerating two commandments giving them almost an equal importance.
o V. 39: Jesus does not keep the two commandments on the same level and that is reason why he says, “the second is like the first” (not the first); but still it shares the same love that is expressed to God also to be expressed to the neighbor; Love your neighbor as yourself: it is not easily possible loving the other if one doesn’t love himself; here is a spontaneous movement of being (7:12 – the golden rule). The love of God is not kept under any limit. Here it loving God means to give everything to him with all the heart in the absolute manner; there is no border or limit for loving; instead, loving the neighbor means, giving to the other as we desire to be given; St. John gives a higher meaning to this neighbor’s love; it is no more referred to ourselves but to Christ: “love your neighbor as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34; 15:12).
o V. 40: Jesus provides an answer not only to the question posed but he takes it to the core message of whole scriptures and that’s reason why he adds at the end: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (v.40). In this way Jesus broadens the answer and refers it to the whole message of God for his humanity and his own message of love which should be fulfilled in loving God and the neighbor; “the completion of the Law is love” (Rom 13:10) again encourages to respect and fulfill the law because through this law we reach to love;
- Christian should go above the laws: life is above the law and is in love
o The ancient Jews are known for making a great number of laws and imposing them on the people and we find about 613 precepts among which 365 are negative ones that start with ‘do not do’ and they are compared to the days of the year, one per each day; and other 248 are the positive ones that start with ‘do’ and they are compared to our nerves of the body;
o In reality, in fact, there are only ten commandments that God has given them and he asked them to be faithful at least to these ten; but even those they were not able to follow; where it is said ‘not to kill’, they go on killing; where it is said ‘do not steal’, they go on stealing; and so on;
o Jesus, the giver of the New Law of Love, says that we have to go beyond following laws and we have to enter into the Spirit of love, otherwise we are just law-keepers, not the followers of the Spirit; we have the many examples of this:
 Mt 5:20 – our righteousness should exceed that of scribes and of Pharisees;
 Mt 5:20-22 – not to the point of murder and it is not permitted to be angry with our brothers;
 Mt 5:25f – adultery is a sin but we should not give a chance even to have bad look at a woman;
 Mt 5:31f and 38ff: even in making promises we should act as a genuine Christians;
 The beatitudes that Jesus proposes (Mt 5:1-12) are to be written on heart of every Christian;
 As Jesus, who has more than not doing evil to anyone, has done everything for the well-being of each one, even at the cost of his life, and so we too follow Christ in the way of living our law of love;
o Is it impossible? Some say (like Luther) that it is impossible and hard for the man to follow this new teaching of Christ; yes, indeed, Jesus did not say that it is possible; he said that ‘his yoke is easy and his burden light’ (Mt 11:29f). It is all the same a yoke and a burden; but it is neither impossible for those who desire higher values and who desire to live a holy life because there is the force of the Gospel and the grace of the Holy Spirit which help them; it is impossible only for those who are after the example of the rich young man (Math 19:16-30).
o The key is the way of Jesus: Jesus has shown us the mode and the way of being perfect as the heavenly Father is; “if you love me, keep my commandments” is the teaching of Jesus; love follows the living and observing his laws; even to the extent of loving the enemies as he himself did from the cross;
- Man lives for love and love perfects man to be fully human and fully divine:
o John Paul II, in his encyclical Redemptoris Hominis, Redeemer of Man, n.10, proclaim with great vigor that “man cannot live without love; he remains to himself a being incomprehensible, his life is without any sense, if the love is not revealed to him, if he does not experience and make it his own and if he does not participate in it profoundly.”
o For this reason Jesus proclaims the message of love and reveals the nature of man to the man himself; this means that without love man cannot realize himself fully; Jesus reveals the power of love by giving himself completely to make man fully alive and fully purposeful; he has given the testimony to that love by offering his life (by breaking his body and shedding his blood) on the cross;
o Therefore, love is not a mere sentiment and not a mere emotion but it is an Act; an act in and through which man turns openly and completely to the other giving his whole being, his mind, his heart and finally, if necessary, his life itself; this is an act Jesus has accomplished on the cross for the love of man and demands us to do the same for the love of our neighbor;
o Only in love man can find his dignity that is lost by the sin; only in love man explores the richness and profundity of his nature; only in love he discovers the mysterious dimensions of his reality guided and imbibed from the divine providence.
o Therefore, to learn love we need to love God; and “to love God is to be unvested ourselves of everything that is not of God” says St. John of the Cross. And to love our neighbor means to recognize in the other the image and likeness of God and thus extend our full heart and life towards him;
o To sum up in the words of St. Gregory the Great: “From the love of the neighbor originates the love of God; it is the love of the neighbor which nourishes the love of God. Because who neglect the love of God is not capable of loving his neighbor. We can progress most in the love of God, if first of all, in the womb of his love, we come fed with the milk of the love of the neighbor; as the love of God generates the love of neighbor, the Lord, before saying: ‘love your neighbor’ says: ‘love your God’. In this way, in the land of our heart the first root of love towards him is planted and is developed into the love of the neighbor.”

Conclusion:

- From the pain of love we gain joy and happiness:
o Love is an act; we do not say any more the words of love, like, ‘I love you’ and so on; we keep loving; love do not need words but is expressed and experienced only in the ‘deeds’; Jesus’ love flowed from his great Act on the Cross rather than just from his messages and miracles; it is an act of giving oneself to other; an act by which the giver stands open and transparent before his neighbor; an act goes towards the other with totality of mind and heart, that is, full of thought and full of care for the other; an act that transcends the mere feelings and emotions; an act that transforms the attitude of receiving into an attitude of giving;
o Love is an act; an action needs the energy and spending of the proper capacities for the other; an act that meets lot many of pains and sorrows, insults and misunderstandings, and even then, it does not stop going forward, it goes and goes, amidst all these hindrances, until it reaches its hand to the other; an act which finally gives full of joy and happiness in life;
- Building the love bridge between us and others:
o God, out of his immense love, has already built a bridge on the valley of our fall into sin; he has built it with the wood of the cross and with the act of love of his Son; we need to just make us of this cross of pain in and with love to reach out the heart of God and to be immersed into his love;
o We are called today to build the bridge of love between us and our neighbor cancelling the deep valley of hatred and indifference; we have the help of God’s love that makes us capable of building the bridges through which we can easily reach out to the other and give the possibility also for the other to reach out to us: thus it become an act of reciprocal love and concern; thus we bear both the love of God and the love of neighbor in our heart because the heart is the centre and basement for the experience of love; let us open our heart so that both the love of God and love of neighbor have the possibility of meeting each other and we become a man of love and our Christian task will become an act of love.

TWENTY NINTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

TWENTY NINTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A:
(Is 45:1, 4-6; 1The 1:1-5; Math 22:15-21)

Theme: As Christians we are called to build both the kingdom of God and the just human society

Reflection:

- The last week’s Gospel helped us to understand the requirements that are demanded when we are invited and called for the banquet, the Eucharist; our acceptance of the invitation of God follows also some conditions and one and first among them all is: an unwavering and ever-ready faith. God extends his call of salvation freely and gratuitously to all; but only few are in the grade to accept it and among these very few demonstrate the good disposition to realize this call; we need to be vested the appropriate and expected garment – the wedding garment; God himself provides it and we have to only keep it in position of wearing it, that means, we have keep it always clean and pure and this way we can be every ready and ever in position to accept the invitation and enter into the communion with God and with others.
- The banquet of the Lord is holy and our presence should also be in the same manner; we cannot participate in it with unclean heart and unworthy life; if we do participate knowingly and willingly in it without proper preparation we bring upon ourselves the condemnation and judgment of God: ‘to be tied up and be thrown into the dark room’; that means, all our possibilities for the salvation are tied up and we find ourselves in the room of darkness and damnation; therefore, either gaining salvation or buying destruction is all the same placed in our hands and as we sow the seeds so we reap: if we sow good seeds of faith and love then we are permitted to participate and so we are fruitful once again reaping the fruits of joy and communion with the Lord.
- Instead, today’s Gospel helps us to understand that we are called not only for giving glory to God with the liturgy and prayers but also for building his kingdom of peace, justice and love through our active participation in the social and community responsibility; that’s what Jesus means when he asks us to give to God what belongs to God, that is his glory, and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, that is social task; as Christians, therefore, we are not called just to live a life of holiness with pious and devotional practices which is of course a great and wonderful offering to God, but more than that we are called to live a responsible life in and for the surroundings we are placed, of course again with the spiritual strength we gain through our faith and prayers;
- We need to strike the balance between the prayer and practice, between the reading the Good News of the Scripture and giving the good life to others, between desiring for the kingdom of God to come on earth and making it realize in our midst by our actions, and finally between raising our hands to God in vertical dimension and extending our hands to our neighbors in the horizontal dimension and thus making a cross in life and living a life of cross; that’s exactly what Christ has done on the cross: offering himself to God in the symbolism of the vertical piece and pouring out of his body and blood for the salvation of the humanity in the symbolism of the horizontal piece on which he has opened his arms to embrace all;
- Thus, we are to, in the same manner of Christ, come down from the Church of prayers and liturgy (from the silence of sitting in the presence of the Lord) in order to meet our fellow brothers and sisters in their need (to the struggles of the poor, the daily battles of the rejected and thrown-outs, the un-solvable problems of the innocent and endless is the list) and to take them also up to the Father’s bosom of love and joy (raising them from their present ignorance and helplessness to the knowledge and trust in God).
- We are pleased to sit an hour or two in the presence of God, singing songs and raising hands to give him praise and even more when there is prayer meeting or charismatic gathering with the Bibles and hymnals in the hand! Yes, we are truly Christians. No doubt in it and we should be given the necessary applause for this. Now the question is: is it all the Christian vocation? Can we be satisfied with the prayers we make and remain untouched in its requirements? Can we say that the kingdom of God which we desire to come on to earth has come just with the power of our prayers? And finally, can we sit for ten or twenty minutes in the presence of the needy (be it our neighbor or be it anybody), offering few kind words of encouragement and opening our arms to console them and if needed to raise our voice in the support of their cause?
- If we are unable to answer these questions or if we keep ourselves safely away from these ever persisting questions of life, can we really say that we are giving to God what is God’s and giving to the neighbors what is theirs? Through His Word God makes us to open our eyes to see and to establish the kingdom of God amidst us both with our spiritual power of prayer and with our social responsibility of giving witness.

First Reading:

- Human authority is the will and work of God:
o God is the author of human authority and human leadership according to the Christian faith; it is God who, out of his concern and love for the humanity, permits a particular person, in the particular place and in the particular time, to be the leader of the human society;
o Everything works this way, as we Christians understand it, just because nothing can escape the mind and will of God; it is for this reason we have to treat our leaders, either political or social, with respect and extend our full support and cooperation for building the just society;
- Cyrus, the Persian king, is God’s instrument: the content of the first reading:
o Today’s first reading narrates how the authority of God passes through the human instrument: “Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him” (v.45:1); thus the king is God’s right hand with which he permits his will to be amidst us.
o God anoints Cyrus to proclaim the liberation of Israel from the Babylonian slavery and their return to the Palestine and therefore God’s act in their passage from the slavery to the salvation;
o God manifests his power and his superiority in anointing a king for himself and for his people and utilizes him as the instrument of redemption of his people purified in the exile;
- God and His Reign is the Ultimate Reality:
o However powerful it may become the human authority is always inferior to God; there are no leaders, no authorities, no, not even gods before him and that is the assurance and hope that God himself provides for us by his messengers: “I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god” (v.5).
o Therefore, the first preference is for the kingdom of God but it has to enter into the world through the human instrumentation and indeed with the will of God; therefore, we have to bow down before God’s will and reign and at the same time we have to give reverence to the human authority too just because He assured: “I the Lord do all these things” (v.7).

Second Reading:

- God’s message is infused into human hearts with the power of the Holy Spirit, the author of the human heart:
o The first letter to the Thessalonians is the very earlier documents of Christianity and it is written from Corinth in 51 A.D. St. Paul has predicated at Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia, during his second visit in the year 50.
o The city of Thessalonica has a consistent colony of Jews apart from its inhabitants; Paul writes to the newly entered Christians to be eager and ready to accept the Gospel, not just as a word (as it was by the Jews) but as the Power of the Spirit (as it was by the new Christians);
o We can find in this passage one synthesis of community which is being perfected both in the human dimension and in the theological dimension; the human task is expressed by the three theological virtues which sprout in the faithful of Thessalonica: the operating faith, the matured charity and the constant hope.
o Finally, the divine presence is testified by the ‘power of the Holy Spirit’ (v.5), and that is, by the interior and physical miracles that are taking place in the community and by the multiplicity of charismas that are present in the community;
o With the divine spirit the Church of Thessalonica grows and is fortified and it is because it is the work of God himself: “may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound” (1 Thes 5:23).

Gospel:

- Biblical Context: to silence the entrappers
o The Gospel and in particular the Gospel of Mathew is full of ‘confrontations of Jesus with the Jewish Authorities’ and we see this often between Jesus and Pharisees, Sadducees, and as in today’s reading, the Herodians;
o Their main fear is that Jesus is being recognized and accepted by the common people as the Messiah and as a great Prophet who makes things right for them; Jesus’ familiarity with the people has become a threat for these authorities and they are afraid of ‘how far this may reach’ and their worry is that people may make him great disowning and neglecting their authority;
o The test for Jesus by them is often to make him close his face in front of the people and so it is one of the tricks to trap him and thus to see his end; we may see the number of example of this entrapment of Jesus by them: first of all, in the beginning of his ministry itself Jesus has spoken against the hypocritical example they give on his sermon on the mount as is put in Mathew, chap 5-7, where Jesus speaks of the New Law which purifies and perfects the law given to them by Moses; second, in chap 9:2-8, Jesus knowing their wicked intentions proves by the miracle that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins; then, in chap 12:9-14, when the question of keeping of Sabbath is raised, Jesus puts them down with the counter question for which they have gone out and conspired against him; then in chap 15:1-20, when the discourse about the following the Tradition of the Elders Jesus rebukes them for their slow understanding and calls them hypocrites; and in the passages like Jesus and paying the temple tax (17:24ff) and when Jesus is asked to prove his authority (21:23-27); these are only few citations and we can find them many more; but in each of these instances either Jesus silenced them or they went away with anger of not accepting his performance.
o In the same context we find today’s reading also. The intention of the Jewish authority is clear in the first verse of today’s gospel: “the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him” (vv.15-16). They have not come to listen and to know from Jesus the genuine answer; instead, they have come to put him to the test and thus prove him wrong and make him a cheater; it is for this reason even Jesus does not give a straight answer or in a smooth manner and thus questions them again because he knows their malice (v.18). The answer that Jesus gives them at the end is just amazing that they left him and went away with wonderstruck.
o Therefore this passage appears both in the context of confrontation with the authority and also in the context of his proximity to the passion and death before which his disciples have to make a radical decision either to be for the world (Caesar) or to be for God (accepting him) and he means this when he says: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”.
o The political power cannot be considered as an absolute power. Therefore the Christians should be attentive not to accept any form of power which holds itself to be total submission of conscience. Again, the political power is nothing in the sight of God because it is from his it takes it form and its usage. Per the individuals or for the society there is only God, the Almighty, whom they have to adore. All the power comes from God alone: “you would not have the authority over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11).

- Spiritual explanation of the passage: Having God in the Heart and world in the hands:
o Give to God what belongs to Him: what can we give to God?
 The faithful praise: we are created in his image and likeness and therefore, we carry in our heart the very nature and very imprint of God’s love; as long as we remember that we are just a gift of his love to the world, though the parents are of human instruments for his design of will, we are ‘obliged’ and we have to live with unwavering faith in Him and offer always an immense praise to him for the ‘bounty of goodness and mercy’ he has shown to us;
 The hopeful adoration: we are just his creatures and the work of his hands; we have to call to our mind our littleness before him although he has elevated us with the freedom and dignity; as we are in world, every moment of our life, we have to ‘see and experience’ the wonders that he accomplishes in our life, even in the midst of our trials and sufferings; therefore, we just have to ‘adore him in silence and with hope’ for the his promise of joy and bliss that follows our faith.
 The charitable testimony: our faith and our hope are to be transformed into the acts of charity; this means that we should be able to see God in and through our neighbor; our daily faith should be an example and our hopeful living should a sign for other to see and give glory to God who filled us with these virtues; in a word, we have to give testimony of life with the gestures of love towards the needy;
 Apart from these or as the consequence of these we fulfill the first greatest commandment: “Love your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength”; this is the commandment of God’s love; therefore, giving glory to him means that we offer to him in return for his love, our heart, our mind and our strength; of this we will reflect more in the coming Sunday;
 All our life should be ‘An Event of God’s Glory’ or the manifestation of his love in and through us; this is what called ‘Give to God what belongs to God’ and in the spiritual sense, we can say, having God in our heart;
o Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar: what can we give to the Society?
 Our time and energy and talents: we are in the society and in the community of people and not in the desert; therefore, we have the obligation to work for the well-being of all our neighbors; we are asked to spend our availability (time) and our readiness (energy) and our capabilities (talents);
 Responsibility and Cooperation: each one is given a possibility of living only for the growth and development of the neighborhood; everyone should feel responsible for desiring the good of all and extend the necessary cooperation to the local leaders/government or the society and only this way we can build the just society; this also includes, paying our taxes in the due time, utilizing the resources of the society in the useful manner and saving the unnecessary misuse of the public properties and finally allowing them to live in comfort and peace;
 All these are the consequences of the fulfillment of the second greatest commandment: “love your neighbor as yourself”; this is the commandment of Neighbor’s love; therefore, giving these to the local authority means that we offer to it in return for its service to us; of this also we will reflect more in the coming Sunday;
 All our life, therefore, should also be ‘An Occasion of Service to the Society’ and this is what called ‘giving to Caesar what belong to him’ and in the spiritual sense, we can say, ‘holding the world in our hands’.


Conclusion:
- Building the Kingdom of God:
o As Christians we are called to build up the kingdom of God, that is, the kingdom of peace, love and joy in the Holy Spirit, as said by St. Paul (Rom 14:17);
o It is only possible by building our spiritual life through the prayers, liturgical celebrations, bible reading and meditation; our spirit is nourished both by God’s Word (the message of Jesus) and by his Eucharist (the body and blood of Jesus) and therefore, we need to pay loving attention to this spiritual aspect of our life;
o Unless we are strong in the mind and heart with this spiritual nourishment we cannot do anything good without selfish motives;
o In this way, we certainly require ‘sitting in the presence of the Lord’ and rendering him a worthy praise of thanksgiving and glory; once we offer ourselves completely to God and to his will, then, he will work in us and his work will be fruitful and then, we see ‘our prayer of thy kingdom come’ being realized in and through us ‘as the kingdom already come’.
- Building the just human society:
o As Christians we are not called only to live contemplative life keeping ourselves aloof from the world and its tasks; no this is not true as the Gospel of today admonishes us; we are called to build simultaneously the just society too;
o As long as we are in the world, it is true that we do not belong to the world (as says John Paul II: we are in the world but we are not of the world), but we have the social responsibility to create and develop a just human world, a world of solidarity, a world of justice, a world of equality and a world of peace;
o We should have commitment and dedication towards the world (or a small community in the local sense) and we should feel responsible that ‘I am in the world and for the world; therefore, I should do something for its growth’.
o We can build the human society with the same faith and with the same Christian witness; we need to ‘come out of God’s presence and glory’ to meet our neighbor, of course, with the same spiritual strength we have gained in the Church; we can also remember the radical call that Ravindranath Tagore who says that God is not there anymore in the walls of the prayer hall, he has gone to sit amidst those who are working in the stones and who is in sweat of every laborer.
o Therefore, Christ calls us today: ‘My Child, come out of the Church; enough of prayer for today and for now; transform this prayer into a loving act; go out meet the needy; extend your hand filled with my grace; continue doing this till the last drop of your blood; this is the prayer in action which I like much, than the prayer of lips;’ we need to listen to the call of Jesus who wills that we work, as his followers, for the building of both ‘the kingdom of God’ and ‘the just human society’.
- Building the Christian Unity: One Christ, One Faith and One Baptism
o As Catholics we have another important and very difficult talk; our Christian testimony is not authentic unless we are not united and unless we do not have the common understanding of ‘living together as one family’.
o We have One Christ but are we still one? This is the first question we have to answer; the other Christians communities are being divided with the selfish and dominative characters; where there is no unity, it simple to understand, that there is no Holy Spirit because he is the principle of unity and communion; they are divided in themselves and thus, one church becomes ten and ten into hundred; the reason is very obvious: they do not witness Christ authentically but strive for their living and personal growth and personal domination;
o On the other way, in the Catholic Church we are all still one and under the same Pastor (Pope) who keep us in the spirit of community; we do not say that we do not have different opinions; we do have them; but finally, the word of the ambassador of Christ, the Pope and the Magisterium, is being obeyed all over the world; in this way, we still have and we will have the principle of unity; and there it is we, Catholics, who have to work for the unity of all Christians so that our common testimony have its authenticity and its effect for the building up of the community of love and peace;
- In this way, we the Christians and in particular Catholics are called to build up these movements: the kingdom of God (giving to God what belongs to him), the just human society (giving to the civil authority what belongs to it) and finally, the Christian Unity (for the glory of God and the well-being of the Society);