Readings for Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time[1][2]
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
Commentary:
Reading 1 Hosea 2:16, 17c-18, 21-22
The Prophet Hosea, voicing God’s hope for the people of Israel as husband might speak to a wife who was unfaithful, exhorts the people to turn from the idolatry (the worship of baal). He tells them that if the will but be faithful God’s love and mercy is eternal, that God is always faithful. In Hebrew tradition this would include the gifts for the bride (cf Genesis 24:53)
Responsorial Psalm Psalm 145:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Psalm 145 is a hymn of praise. These strophes (because it is in the acrostic form – each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet) although loosely assembled, praise God for his mercy and compassion and give thanks for His creation and redemption.
Gospel Matthew 9:18-26
Jesus continues his journey in the passage from Matthew’s Gospel. Again he engages in healing those who have faith in him. First the woman with a hemorrhage, as she touches him in faith, she experiences the healing touch. In Luke the Lord feels this touch and seeks out the woman.
Next Jesus heals the “Official’s Daughter”. In Mark’s Gospel she was at the point of death, here she had already “fallen asleep” meaning she had died. Again Jesus seeing the faith of the requestor raises her from her death bed to new life.
Reflection:
As we hear the words of God, the loving husband, from the Prophet Hosea and then see the acts of love performed in the miracles of Jesus, we feel God’s love for us at its most intense. The Prophet Hosea, himself the victim of a fickle wife whom he loved desperately, sees God’s love for a fickle and self-centered people in the same way.
God, with his loving hand constantly out-stretched, is repeatedly rebuffed by a people he created and loves. In ancient times, the Prophet sees this as the people turn from faithful worship of God to the worship of idols (although they still call themselves the Children of Abraham). They do not want to give up their possessive relationship with the invisible God who guides and protects them. But the rituals of baal are hedonistic and celebrate the degradation of the body and spirit.
Hosea sees all this and calls them back to God, as the loving husband might call back a degraded wife whom he sill loves. In the case of the loving Father, his love for us is so intense that he sent his Only Son so the invisible God might reveal himself and the people might have hope in Him. The miracles he performs; healing the sick as in the woman with a hemorrhage and the resurrection of the child are evidence of God’s great compassion.
The worship of baal in today’s culture has taken on a different guise. The people of today’s culture are too sophisticated to need to attach a superstitious ritual to their worship of idols. Instead of high altars and human sacrifice, we have casinos, entertainment establishments, and stores where all manner of pleasures may be engaged in and all manner of idols (symbols of wealth) may be purchased, not with prayer and sacrifice in the religious sense, but certainly sacrifice in the sense that we give up our own hard labor merely for prestige or for a moment’s pleasure.
We are not speaking here of simply going out to enjoy an evening’s deserved leisure but of those who literally worship at these altars. We see them, we know them, and like Hosea we can call them back from their excess. Even now the loving Father pleads with them to return.
Today our prayer is that those who have given up on the invisible God and now worship at the modern temples of baal, will return to the loving care of God and that we might be an instrument of that noble work.
Pax
[1] After Links to Readings Expire
[2] The picture used today is “The Miracle of the Resurrected Child” by Simone Martini, 1312-17
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
Commentary:
Reading 1 Hosea 2:16, 17c-18, 21-22
The Prophet Hosea, voicing God’s hope for the people of Israel as husband might speak to a wife who was unfaithful, exhorts the people to turn from the idolatry (the worship of baal). He tells them that if the will but be faithful God’s love and mercy is eternal, that God is always faithful. In Hebrew tradition this would include the gifts for the bride (cf Genesis 24:53)
Responsorial Psalm Psalm 145:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Psalm 145 is a hymn of praise. These strophes (because it is in the acrostic form – each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet) although loosely assembled, praise God for his mercy and compassion and give thanks for His creation and redemption.
Gospel Matthew 9:18-26
Jesus continues his journey in the passage from Matthew’s Gospel. Again he engages in healing those who have faith in him. First the woman with a hemorrhage, as she touches him in faith, she experiences the healing touch. In Luke the Lord feels this touch and seeks out the woman.
Next Jesus heals the “Official’s Daughter”. In Mark’s Gospel she was at the point of death, here she had already “fallen asleep” meaning she had died. Again Jesus seeing the faith of the requestor raises her from her death bed to new life.
Reflection:
As we hear the words of God, the loving husband, from the Prophet Hosea and then see the acts of love performed in the miracles of Jesus, we feel God’s love for us at its most intense. The Prophet Hosea, himself the victim of a fickle wife whom he loved desperately, sees God’s love for a fickle and self-centered people in the same way.
God, with his loving hand constantly out-stretched, is repeatedly rebuffed by a people he created and loves. In ancient times, the Prophet sees this as the people turn from faithful worship of God to the worship of idols (although they still call themselves the Children of Abraham). They do not want to give up their possessive relationship with the invisible God who guides and protects them. But the rituals of baal are hedonistic and celebrate the degradation of the body and spirit.
Hosea sees all this and calls them back to God, as the loving husband might call back a degraded wife whom he sill loves. In the case of the loving Father, his love for us is so intense that he sent his Only Son so the invisible God might reveal himself and the people might have hope in Him. The miracles he performs; healing the sick as in the woman with a hemorrhage and the resurrection of the child are evidence of God’s great compassion.
The worship of baal in today’s culture has taken on a different guise. The people of today’s culture are too sophisticated to need to attach a superstitious ritual to their worship of idols. Instead of high altars and human sacrifice, we have casinos, entertainment establishments, and stores where all manner of pleasures may be engaged in and all manner of idols (symbols of wealth) may be purchased, not with prayer and sacrifice in the religious sense, but certainly sacrifice in the sense that we give up our own hard labor merely for prestige or for a moment’s pleasure.
We are not speaking here of simply going out to enjoy an evening’s deserved leisure but of those who literally worship at these altars. We see them, we know them, and like Hosea we can call them back from their excess. Even now the loving Father pleads with them to return.
Today our prayer is that those who have given up on the invisible God and now worship at the modern temples of baal, will return to the loving care of God and that we might be an instrument of that noble work.
Pax
[1] After Links to Readings Expire
[2] The picture used today is “The Miracle of the Resurrected Child” by Simone Martini, 1312-17
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