TWENTY-SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Tuesday

Year I

Readings

First Reading
Jon 3:1–10

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 130:1b–2, 3–4ab, 7–8

Gospel
Lk 10:38–42

Meditation on Today’s Readings

Taken from the Vatican II Sunday and Weekday Missal
Written by Celia Sirois

The theme of repentance marks the two first readings for today. The selection from Jonah describes the conversion of Nineveh. Like everything else in this humorous book, this too is told with deliberate exaggeration. This “enormously large” city experiences a total repentance that extends to all, great and small, man and beast alike. Such repentance moves God to repent as well and Nineveh is spared. The excerpt from Galatians relates the conversion of Paul. The text deliberately emphasizes the totality that seems to have characterized Paul, such as his persecution of the Church “beyond measure” because he was “even more a zealot” as a fervent Jew. But such totality must have attracted the grace of God, for Paul is called to spread the Gospel among the Gentiles.

Today’s Gospel is a lesson on hospitality. Jesus teaches Martha that the one thing hospitality requires is wholly attending to the guest, as Mary is doing. Yet this may teach us about repentance too. The conversion required of most of us is not dramatic, like Nineveh’s or Paul’s. It may only require that we learn to give our undivided attention to the Guest who already dwells in our anxious and busy hearts.

The copyright for the Sunday Missal Introductions is:
Copyright (c) 2001, Daughters of St. Paul
The copyright for the Weekday Missal Introduction is:
Copyright (c) 2002, Daughters of St. Paul