First
Reading - Deuteronomy 5:12-15 ©
Responsorial Psalm
80(81): 3-8, 10-11
Second Reading – 2 Corinthians 4:6-11 ©
Gospel Acclamation – John 6:63, 68
Alternate Acclamation – John 17:17
The Gospel
According to Mark 2:23-3.6 ©
(NJB)
Listen!
When you read the
law concerning the sabbath remember Jesus’ teaching who instructs us that the
sabbath was made for the benefit of human beings and for no other purpose.
It is right and
good to keep the sabbath. It is right and good to take time out of your week to
reflect on the providence of the divine, to look into the faces of your spouse
and children, your mother and father, your sister and brother, your employer
and your employees and see the face of God…you will find God looking back at
you in the eyes of the homeless, the disenfranchised, the sick and the
stranger.
Give to them as
you can, help them to a place of rest if you are able, facilitate their experience
of grace through the love you provide to them.
Know this!
There is strength
in the knowledge of God, the creator of the universe. It is right to praise God
and good to rejoice in life which God brought forth from the primordial chaos,
to rejoice in human life and to celebrate in your life…in all of its your
uniqueness.
Consider how Jesus
taught the law: love God, and demonstrate this not through words but through
actions, by loving your neighbor even as you love yourself.
Do not believe in
the old lies and misconstruals of the law, do not blindly accept the will of
human being as representing the will of the divine.
Remember.
God does not
interfere with the choices we make. What we accomplish, or fail to accomplish,
happens due to the choices we make, not because God has a stake in those
things. God did not rescue the Jews from Egypt, God did not give them Israel
for an inheritance. They freed themselves and waged war on the land of Canaan.
They took the possessions of Canaan at the point of the sword, through murder,
fire and blood.
Know this.
It was not God’s
will. God has no enemies.
God leads us to
the knowledge of the divine in the subtle ways. Through the seed of the Word
that dwells within us, which is to say: by virtue of the fact that we are
created in the divine image, that we are gifted with reason so that we are able
to know and understand the truth.
Meditate on the
law, it is written in your heart, it is the same law that was written in Jesus’
heart:
Love God with all
your strength and all your heart and all your mind, and love your neighbor as
yourself…do this in fulfillment of the law.
Consider the
teaching of the apostle and know that faith should not be taught as a mode of mysteries.
It is not forbidden to speculate about the eternal and the invisible, but what
can we know of those things, conditioned as we are by time and space. It is not
the eternal and the invisible that should concern us in this life, it is the
people we encounter every day, the people we can see and feel and touch.
Our eternal home
is waiting for us, as it waits for all of God’s children, even as it waits for those
who work against God’s will; even they are loved by God…do not reject them or turn
them away, for they are also the objects of God’s love.
Do speak of the glory
of God, or the glory of Jesus, or the glory of the promise. Speak instead of
the ordinary and humble way of life that God calls us to.
That is the way
Jesus called on us to follow.
Be mindful.
The Gospel provides
many examples of where the early church began to deviate from the teaching of
Jesus, as when Peter suggests that he received from Jesus a secret concerning the
path to eternal life. Peter would have us believe that the purpose of believing
in the gospel, of believing that Jesus is the “Holy One of God” is the key to
receiving the gift of salvation.
Peter’s scheme
suggests that God parcels out access to Jesus, to the truth, to the reality of
life everlasting, allowing some to come to it while refusing others; this scheme
is false.
Here is the gospel:
God loves you, and you are saved.
You are not saved
for anything that you have done, you did not earn it, you are saved because God
loves you. The promise of salvation is not that you will be spared from
suffering and torment in hell, or that when you are judged God will forgive you;
God has already forgiven you, you are saved already.
God has prepared
you, and everyone for eternal life.
Believe it!
Let the goodness
of this promise flow through you, live your life as if you know that it is true…even
if you doubt…especially when you doubt.
We are not called
to believe in the idea that Jesus is this or that, the Holy One of God, we are
called to act on the principles of his faith, his trust in divine providence,
we are called to live lives of charity and service to each other, to walk
humbly, do could and serve justice all the days of our lives.
Remember.
You cannot lie and serve God at one and the same time.
Consider the Gospel reading for today, it is a cautionary tale.
On the one hand
today’s reading serves as an indictment of the people who plotted against
Jesus, of those who desired to see an end to his ministry and who plotted his
murder.
On the other hand
it serves to separate the ministry of Jesus, who was himself a Pharisee, from
the establishment of Pharisaic Judaism, which in the period of the early
Church, had not converted to Christianity, and whose membership was extremely
hostile to it.
However, the most
important aspect of the narrative is that the ordinances of God, the laws and
customs of the people, exist to serve humankind, not the other way around.
Jesus is a good
theologian, he makes the argument first on the basis of tradition and
scripture, and then on the grounds of justice.
The miracle that
is described need not be taken literally; it is a metaphor, as a metaphor it
serves to put the exclamation point on the rest of the narrative.
The power to heal
comes from God, from God would not have granted such power in contravention of
God’s law, giving the proof that Jesus has correctly interpreted the law, and that
stands in divine favor.
First
Reading - Deuteronomy 5:12-15 ©
Remember that You
were A Servant in the Land of Egypt
The Lord says
this:
‘Observe the
sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. For six
days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath
for the Lord your God. You shall do no work that day, neither you nor your son
nor your daughter nor your servants, men or women, nor your ox nor your donkey
nor any of your animals, nor the stranger who lives with you. Thus your
servant, man or woman, shall rest as you do. Remember that you were a servant
in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out from there
with mighty hand and outstretched arm; because of this, the Lord your God has
commanded you to keep the sabbath day.’
Responsorial Psalm
80(81): 3-8, 10-11
Solemn Renewal of
the Covenant
Ring Out Your Joy
to God Our Strength.
Shout with joy to
God our helper,
rejoice in the God of Jacob.
Take up the song,
sound the timbrel,
play on the lyre and the harp.
At the start of
the month, sound the trumpet,
at the full moon, at our festival.
For this is the
law for Israel,
the decree of the God of Jacob.
He gave it to
Joseph, for a witness,
when he went out of the land of Egypt;
with words that had never been heard:
“I freed his back
from burdens;
his hands were freed from heavy loads.
In your
tribulation you called on me and I freed you,
I heard you from the heart of the storm,
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
Listen, my people,
and I will put my case –
Israel, if you would only hear me!
You shall not have
any strange god,
you shall not worship the gods of foreigners.
For I am the Lord,
your God,
who led you out of the land of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth and I shall fill it.
But my people did
not hear my voice:
Israel did not turn to me.
So I let them go
on in the hardness of their hearts,
and follow their own counsels.
If my people had
heard me,
if only they had walked in my ways –
I would swiftly
have crushed their enemies,
stretched my hand over those who persecuted
them.
The enemies of the
Lord would be overcome with weakness,
Israel’s would be the good fortune, for ever:
I would feed them full of richest wheat
and give them
honey from the rock,
to their heart’s content.
Second Reading – 2
Corinthians 4:6-11 ©
In Our Mortal Flesh
the Life of Jesus is Openly Shown
It is the same God
that said, ‘Let there be light shining out of darkness’, who has shone in our
minds to radiate the light of the knowledge of God’s glory, the glory on the
face of Christ.
We are only the earthenware jars that hold
this treasure, to make it clear that such an overwhelming power comes from God
and not from us. We are in difficulties on all sides, but never cornered; we
see no answer to our problems, but never despair; we have been persecuted, but
never deserted; knocked down, but never killed; always, wherever we may be, we
carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too,
may always be seen in our body. Indeed, while we are still alive, we are consigned
to our death every day, for the sake of Jesus, so that in our mortal flesh the
life of Jesus, too, may be openly shown.
Gospel Acclamation
– John 6:63, 68
Alleluia,
alleluia!
Your words are
spirit, Lord, and they are life; you have the message of eternal life.
Alleluia!
Alternate
Acclamation – John 17:17
Alleluia,
alleluia!
Your word is
truth, O Lord: Consecrate us in the truth.
Alleluia!
The Gospel According to Mark 2:23-3.6 ©
The Son of Man is Master Even of the Sabbath
One sabbath day,
Jesus happened to be taking a walk through the cornfields, and his disciples
began to pick ears of corn as they went along. And the Pharisees said to him,
‘Look, why are they doing something on the sabbath day that is forbidden?’ And
he replied, ‘Did you never read what David did in his time of need when he and
his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God when Abiathar was
high priest, and ate the loaves of offering which only the priests are allowed
to eat, and how he also gave some to the men with him?’
And he said to
them, ‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; the Son of Man is
master even of the sabbath.’
He went again into
a synagogue, and there was a man there who had a withered hand. And they were
watching him to see if he would cure him on the sabbath day, hoping for
something to use against him. He said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stand
up out in the middle!’ Then he said to them, ‘Is it against the law on the
sabbath day to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to kill?’ But they said
nothing. Then, grieved to find them so obstinate, he looked angrily round at
them, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out and his
hand was better. The Pharisees went out and at once began to plot with the
Herodians against him, discussing how to destroy him.
A Homily – The Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
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