Tenth Sunday Ordinary Time
L-Ghaxar Hadd ta’ Matul taz-Zmien
is-Sena
Missalin p387
Reading 1 GENESIS 3:9-15
After the man, Adam, had eaten of the tree, the LORD
God called to the man and asked him, "Where are you?" He answered,
"I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I
hid myself." Then he asked, "Who told you that you were naked? You
have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!" The
man replied, "The woman whom you put here with me— she gave me fruit from
the tree, and so I ate it." The LORD God then asked the woman, "Why
did you do such a thing?" The woman answered, "The serpent tricked me
into it, so I ate it." Then the LORD God said to the serpent:
"Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and
from all the wild creatures;on your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you
eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike
at his heel."
L-Ewwel Qari -
mill-Ktieb tal-Genesi 3, 9-15
Wara li Adam kiel
Responsorial Psalm PSALM 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
R. (7bc) With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication. R.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered. R.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord. R.
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption
and he will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities. R/
Salm Responsorjali - Salm
129 (130), 1-2.3-4ab.4ç-6.7-8
Rl . Ghand
il-Mulej hemm it-tjieba, u l-fidwa ghandu bil-kotra
Minn qiegh l-art insejjahlek, Mulej:
isma’, Sidi, il-lehen tieghi!
Ha jkunu widnejk miftu?
ha, jiena u nitolbok bil-hniena. Rl .
Jekk tal-htijiet int taghti kas, Mulej,
Sidi, min jista’ jzomm shih?
Imma ghandek hemm il-mahfra,
biex hekk inqimuk fil-biza’ tieghek. Rl .
Jien lill-Mulej nistenna,
ruhi f’kelmtu tittama.
Tistenna ruhi lil Sidi,
aktar milli l-ghassiesa s-sebh. Rl .
Jistenna Izrael lill-Mulej!
Ghax ghand il-Mulej hemm it-tjieba,
u l-fidwa ghandu bil-kotra.
Hu li jifdi lil Izrael
minn htijietu kollha. Rl .
Reading 2 - 2 CORINTHIANS
4:13—5:1
Brothers and sisters: Since we have the same
spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke,
we too believe and therefore we speak, knowing that the one who raised the Lord
Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in his presence.
Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more
and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.
Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is w asting
away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light
affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is
seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if our
earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a
dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.
Qari II -
mill-Ittra lill-Korintin 4, 13 - 5,
Huti, billi ahna ghandna
l-istess spirtu ta’ fidi li fuqu hemm miktub: «Emmint, u ghalhekk tkellimt»,
ahna wkoll emminna, u ghalhekk tkellimna;
ghax nafu li dak li qajjem lill-Mulej Gesù, lilna wkoll ghad iqajjimna flimkien ma’ Gesù
u jressaqna quddiemu flimkien
maghkom. Ghax dan kollu minhabba fikom,
biex il-grazzja tilhaq hafna bnedmin ohra, u b’hekk jitkattar ir-radd ta’ hajr,
ghall-glorja ta’ Alla. Ghalhekk ma
naqtghux qalbna, ghax imqar jekk
il-bniedem ta’ barra jithassar,
il-bniedem ta’ gewwa jiggedded minn
Gospel MARK
3:20-35
Jesus came
home with his disciples. Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for
them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him,
for they said, "He is out of his mind." The scribes who had come from
Jerusalem
Evangelju Qari
skont San Mark 3, 20-35
F’dak iz-zmien, Gesù, flimkien mad-dixxipli tieghu,
mar id-dar, u l-kotra regghet ingemghet, hekk li anqas biss setghu jieklu.
Qrabatu, malli semghu, hargu biex izommuh, ghax qalu li tilef mohhu.
Il-kittieba li kienu nizlu minn
///////////////////////////////////////////////
The Kingdom requires of us to do God’s
will
A reflection by Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB
Sunday’s Gospel story of the unbelieving scribes
from Jerusalem
Family
ties
In the middle of the controversy, Jesus learns that
his mother, brothers, and sisters have arrived (32). Throughout Jesus' earthly
life, two groups felt themselves particularly close to him: first, his
immediate family circle in Nazareth
Jesus teaches his blood ties that his disciples are
key to himself and his new ministry. Nevertheless, this new group was a threat
to blood relations (33-35). When Jesus’ own family says that he is beside
himself, they are also inferring that he is possessed by a devil. That is the
explicit response of the scribes who arrived from Jerusalem
Jesus’ family had ample reasons to think he was
eccentric, or “beside himself,” because his life revolved around another center
than that of his immediate relatives or of the people of his time. For Jesus,
that center is indicated in verse 35: it is doing the will of God. To do God’s
will is what the kingdom requires; family ties are secondary. The good news of
the Gospel, with all its promises and demands, is that whoever does the will of
God is not only the brother, sister, and mother of Jesus, but by that very fact
is also his or her own true and deepest self.
The
unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit
The spirit that works in Jesus, by which he cast out
demons, is the Holy Spirit of God. Today’s Gospel text also contains the
mysterious reference to the sin or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (29). Why
is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unpardonable? Blasphemy does not consist
in offending against the Holy Spirit with words; it means rather the refusal to
accept the salvation that God offers to us through the Holy Spirit, working
through the power of the crucified Christ. When Jesus says that blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or in the next,
it is because the non-forgiveness is linked to non-repentance, to the radical
refusal to be converted. Only those who set themselves up against forgiveness
are excluded from it.
When we close ourselves up in sin, thus making
impossible our conversion, and consequently the forgiveness of sins, which has
little importance for us, we enter a state of spiritual loss and destruction.
To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit does not allow an escape from our
self-imposed imprisonment to the cleansing and purification of consciences and
the forgiveness of sins.
Doing
the will of God
Jesus’ new center is to do the will of God. This is
the kingdom’s requirement. The will of God is first of all the comprehensive
plan of God for the universe and history. It is the marvelous plan through
which the Father, “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus
Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:5). The same
expression “thy will be done” can refer also to any singular expression of the
will of God. This “will” must be done first of all by God; it is God who
fulfills his plan of salvation for the world.
Far from meaning some kind of passive, helpless
abandonment to fate or circumstance, the “will of God” surpasses our wildest
imagination and dreams, and reveals God’s immense, providential, merciful care
for each and everyone of us. To allow God’s will to be done in us requires a
conscious, decided “yes” or “fiat” on our part, and a sweet and sometimes
bittersweet surrender so that something great may happen in us, through us,
because of us and even in spite of us.
In his programmatic homily at the inauguration of
his Petrine Ministry on April 24, 2005, Benedict XVI said: “Dear friends! At
this moment there is no need for me to present a programme of governance. …My
real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own
ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will
of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at
this hour of our history.”
Imagine Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, one of
the greatest theologians and minds of the Church, announcing to the Church and
the world that he has come not to do his own will, but to listen, together with
the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by the
Lord, so that the Lord himself will lead the Church at this hour of our
history! What powerful words to be taken to heart for each of us!
The
saints are eccentrics
How many times have we thought that the saints are
merely “eccentrics” that the Church exalts for our imitation, people who were
so unrepresentative of and out of touch with the human scene? It is certainly
true of all those men and women who were “eccentric” in its literal sense: they
deviated from the centre, from usual practice, the ordinary ways of doing
things, the established methods. Another way of looking at the saints is that
they stood at the “radical centre.” Not measured or moderate, the saint's
response to God's extravagant love is equally immoderate, marked by fidelity
and total commitment. G. K. Chesterton said: “[such] people have exaggerated
what the world and the Church have forgotten.”
The
reality that explained all reality
In today’s second reading from Paul’s second letter
to the community in Corinth
Reconciliation
and Penance
In light of Sunday’s Gospel, let us read from #17 of
Pope John Paul II’s 1984 Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Reconciliation and
Penance.
“In another passage of the New Testament, namely in
St. Matthew's Gospel, Jesus himself speaks of a ‘blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit’ that ‘will not be forgiven’ by reason of the fact that in its
manifestation, it is an obstinate refusal to be converted to the love of the
Father of mercies.
Here of course it is a question of external radical
manifestations: rejection of God, rejection of his grace and therefore
opposition to the very source of salvation -these are manifestations whereby a
person seems to exclude himself voluntarily from the path of forgiveness. It is
to be hoped that very few persist to the end in this attitude of rebellion or
even defiance of God. Moreover, God in his merciful love is greater than our
hearts, as St. John St. Thomas writes,
‘considering the omnipotence and mercy of God, no one should despair of the
salvation of anyone in this life.’
But when we ponder the problem of a rebellious will
meeting the infinitely just God, we cannot but experience feelings of salutary
‘fear and trembling,’ as St. Paul
In the light of these and other passages of sacred
Scripture, doctors and theologians, spiritual teachers and pastors have divided
sins into mortal and venial. St.
Augustine St. Thomas
In defining and distinguishing between mortal and
venial sins, St. Thomas and the theology of sin that has its source in him
could not be unaware of the biblical reference and therefore of the concept of
spiritual death. According to St.
Thomas
Furthermore, when sin is considered from the point
of view of the punishment it merits, for St.
Thomas
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