Sunday Homily 7-11-10, 15th Ordinary Time
Readings: Deuteronomy 30, 10-14; Psalm 69, Turn to the Lord in Your Need, and You will Live; Colossians 1, 15-20; Luke 10, 25-37
Apologies for a late blog. The Editors are in Lindsay, Ontario where wireless is fairly non-existent on Sundays.
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Introduction to the Readings
Our first reading today comes from the Book of Deuteronomy, which is the fifth book of the Pentateuch. The section is from the closing chapters, which are best identified as “The Final Discourse of Moses”. It may seem strange to us, that having lead the people from captivity in Egypt and spent some 40 years wandering thru the desert, received the famous “Ten Commandments” on Mount Sinai, which set up the covenant between the God and the Jews, we find that Moses is not going to enter into the Promised Land, because of some unnamed fault (Numbers 20: 12). In the reading today, Moses emphasizes the nearness of God’s commandments to the people.
Paul’s Letter to the Colossians gives us what is clearly an early liturgical hymn about Christ. The reason for the letter to the Colossians was that there were some folks creating problems in the community with false teachings. In using this hymn, which was probably part of a very early liturgy, he is working with a concept that faith is not only needed for liturgical worship, but that through liturgical worship faith is deepened. The hymn can be broken into two themes, Christ’s role in creation and Christ’s role in reconciliation.
Our gospel continues the journey to Jerusalem. On the way a lawyer tests Jesus and we have the great story of the “Good Samaritan”.
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. – Homily
What is our image of God? In our lives our image of God must go through many changes. If we reflect on what happened to Moses after all he had done in helping the Jews escape from Egypt, lead them for 40 years thru the desert towards the Promised Land, only to be denied entry himself, it would seem that God is harsh.
If we look at the image of Jesus presented to us in the Second Reading from the letter to the Colossians, we find a God who is more in fitting with what modern writers are calling the Cosmic Christ, who is present in the entire universe and holding all creation in existence. This Cosmic Christ is a difficult image to have a relationship with for humans.
And finally in our Gospel, we are told clearly that the way to live our lives in relationship with God is to love one another, especially those whom we wouldn’t consider our friends. Elsewhere in the gospels we are told “as often as we did it for one these, the least, we did it for Jesus”. So to live our lives as God wants us to, we do need to pay special attention to what we read in the gospels. If I look at the balance in Jesus’ life, he certainly took care of his neighbors, but he also went off to pray quietly. Do we have that balance?
Picture 1: Mass with Tony and Kevin