The first reading, taken from the Second Book of Samuel,
and the Gospel of Luke tell us about two sinners who experienced the mercy of
God.
God is always ready to start again, but he gives us time
until we are ready to accept his will, his loving plan of salvation for each one of us.
Last Sunday's Gospel invited us to reflect on the
compassion of God the Father made known to us through his incarnate son Jesus.
We were invited to be comnpassionate in our human relationships.
Today the Gospel presents to us the mercy of God toward
the sinners, his kindness without boundaries manifested through the goodness
and kindness of his incarnate Son Jesus. We are again invited to be like him,
to be merciful, to feel in our hearts the need and the misery of the other
person.
Another theme in the readings is the hospitality.
Hospitality to welcome into our homes as well as into our hearts. Hospitality manifested in the
concrete actions: washing of feet, kiss of peace, annointing of the head.
FIRST READING, SECOND
BOOK OF SAMUEL 12:7-10,13
ü At the beginning of
chapter 12 we are told that Nathan by means of a parable helps David to
acknowledge his sins of adultery , homicide and infidelity toward God and
toward his people.
ü When David becomes
indignant on listening to the story of the poor man and his sheep, Nathan tell
him "You are this man."
ü The prophet has been sent
by God to David to uncover his sins, to remove the veil of hypocresy and self
satisfaction that filled the heart of King David, may be he had forgotten that
he was called to be shepherd not of sheep but of his people Israel.
ü God through the mouth of
the prophet reminds David of all the benefits he has granted him:
v Victory over Saul
v the kingdom and all
Saul's possessions even the wives who were now David's wives
v the house of Israel and
the house of Judah
v And God adds that he
could continue mentioning all the benefits granted to David
ü But David instead of being the humble shepherd he once was, he had
allowed himself to be poisened by power and oppressive dominion. He has
appropriate everything he has received as his own, he has sinned:
v He has taken the wife of
Uriah for himself, he has taken the life of Uriah. He has dozens of wifes but
he has taken the one of a good man.
v Not satisfied with this
sinful action he has planned the death of Uriah killing him through foreign
hands hoping that his sin would not be known.
ü Because you have done
such a sin, and killed Uriah with the sword, the sword will never depart from
your house, you dynasty.
ü David says to Nathan
"I have sinned against God."
ü Nathan says to David
"The Lord has forgiven your sin, you will not die."
RESPONSORIAL PSALM Ps 32
LORD FORGIVE THE
WRONG I HAVE MADE
Blessed be the one
whose fault is taken away
whose sin is
covered.
Blessed the man to
whom the Lord imputes no guilt
in whose spirit
there is no guile.
I acknowledge my
sin to you
my guilt I covered
not
I said "I
confess my faults to the Lord!
And you took away
the guilt of my sin.
You are my
shelter; from distress you will preserve me;
with glad cries of freedom you will ring me round.
Be glad in the
Lord, and rejoice you just;
exult, all you
upright of heart.
GOSPEL Lk 7:36-50
v Two different persons
A Pharisee, a good and honest
man, who tryes to be faithful to the Law, and who considers himself good.
A woman, a sinner and a
prostritute, she does not know the law, she is marginalized by society even by
those who use her as an object of pleasure.
Jesus offer his salvation to
both of them in this Gospel.
v The Pharisee has invited Jesus to sit at his table for dinner, although he
does not agree too much with what this "prophet" does and says.
v Jesus has accepted the invitation even not feeling welcomed amid the
Pharisees, but he has come for all, for those who know they are sinners and for
those who do not know they are.
v They are enjoying the meal, the drinks, the conversation and all the sudden
a woman comes to ruin this time of sharing. She is a public sinner, a
prostitute. A woman whose sin is seen by all, her sins are not hidden as those
of most of us, and thus we think that we belong to the groups of the "good
people" without sin, at least the sins of that woman.
v The woman goes straight to Jesus and kneels behind him at his feet, and
shows signs of gratefulness and of sorrow:
Ø she bathes the feet of Jesus with her tears
Ø she wipes them with her hair.
Ø she kisses them with love
Ø she anoints the feet of Jesus with ointment
v Probably all those at the table are surprised and scandalized, more than
all the Pharisee who has invited him. No one says anything aloud but they thinkin their hearts "If this man
was a prophet he would know..."
v Yes, Jesus knows and he allows the woman to touch him, and he gives back to
her the grace of God, helps her to
acknowledge her dignity as a human person and to respect herself
v And Jesus speaks to Simon who feels very happy that Jesus wanted to speak
to him, but Simon does not know what Jesus is going to say to him.
v The words that Jesus is about to say to him are words to soften his heart
and to move him to look for the forgiveness of his sins, like the woman
does.
v Two people have a debt, none of them is able to pay it and the creditor
forgives it for both.
v Jesus asks "which of them will love him more?" "the one whose larger debt was
forgiven." Good answer Simon, you see this woman, she has done all the
signs of hospitality that you were supposed to do when I came into your home,
this is a sign that you love less, because if it is true that your sins are
less than the sins of that woman, it is also true that you love less.
v Jesus speaks to the woman "your sins are forgiven"
v whom does he think that he is? only God can forgive sins. They are unable to understand the teaching of
Jesus and draw the consequence that God himself is visiting them.
v This is not possible, because the God we have made for ourselves would not
allowed this woman to touch him and thus make him impure, he would not allow
her to enter the house and he would have expelled her.
v But Jesus, the prophet from
Nazareth, has come to speak to us about the true God, to let us know how
God really is, because the God Jesus teaches about is a loving and caring
Father who gives life and forgives,
always ready to welcome all of us when we go back to Him, and even more,
He looks for us, and when he finds us he is happy.
v Your faith has saved you, because you have believed that I can heal you,
when you realized you were healed you have come to thank me.
v GO IN PEACE. Yes go in peace because
God loves you and welcomes you and gives back to you your dignity as his daughter. Simon now you are not able to experience this
happiness, because you are not ready yet to humbly acknowledge that you are a
sinner, that you are naked and in need of my grace, as the Spirit says to the
bishop of Laodicea in the book of Revelation.
SECOND READING Galatians 2:16.19-21
·
Paul writes this letter to the
communities he had established in the region of Galatia, the center of what is
now Turkey. Those communities were formed by people coming from the pagan
world, there were no Jews among them. When Paul was in this region he was sick.
·
We see how Paul struggles to
convince the people of his communities that salvation comes to us not because
we have done good deeds, but through faith in Christ who has given his life for us. It is the
other way around of what we normally think: we do good deeds because we have
been saved and we have welcomed the salvation as a gift from God.
·
On verse 19 Paul says that by
the Law he has died to the Law. The love
for the Law is what put him on the way to Damascus, where the Lord was waiting
for him to reveal to him that the law cannot save, that what saves is the faith
in the risen Lord. Since then Paul lives only for God
·
Paul continues to say:
v I have been crucified with Christ
v I live no longer I, but Christ lives in me. Such is the intimacy of that
union of Paul with the Lord Jesus whom he had encountered on the way.
v He continues saying that while he lives in his mortal body, that is during
his life in this world, he lives by faith in the Son of God "who loved me
and gave himself up for me."
v He makes this reflection: if we could obtain our justification or salvation
by means of the Law, then Christ would have died in vain.
v But the truth is that the Son of God
became man, was incarnate, because he wanted to give back to us the life that
the Father had given to us from the
beginning.
We are
invited:
v to relate to our brothers and sisters with mercy
v to practice the hospitality welcoming into our heart every one who comes to
us, those who are part of our life and even those we do not even know
v to believe that we do not save
ourselves, but that we are saved by the Lord
At many other times our Lord has
given me the grace to follow him with great detachment from all things and much
trust in His Divine Providence
My Jesus, there is one thing I ask that I know you will
grant. Yes, my Jesus, I ask you for love, for great flames of that fire you
brought down from heaven to earth. May that sacred fire enkindle, burn, melt,
and pour me into the mold of God's will. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary
Sisters, Autobiography, 446.
BIBLIOGRAFÍA:
CLARET, Antonio María , Autobiografía.
PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiografía
PAGOLA, José, Following in the Footsteps of Jesus.
Meditations on the Gospels for Year C. 2012.
RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según Las Escrituras, Año C, 2006
SAGRADA BIBLIA - Versión oficial
de la Conferencia Episcopal Española.
No comments:
Post a Comment