TWENTY-SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Wednesday

Year I

Readings

First Reading
Jon 4:1–11

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 86:3–4, 5–6, 9–10

Gospel
Lk 11:1–4

Meditation on Today’s Readings

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

The prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples in today’s Gospel is typically Jewish. The first two petitions of the Lord’s Prayer—“hallowed be your name / your Kingdom come”—are paralleled in the Jewish prayer called the kaddish. It begins, “Magnified and sanctified be his great Name,” and goes on, “May he establish his kingdom during your life and during your days and during the life of all the house of Israel.” The Jewishness of Jesus gives us a key to understand the controversy Paul reports in today’s passage from Galatians. The first followers of Jesus were Jews, like him. Their mission was limited to the Jews, like Jesus’ mission during his earthly life. Paul’s mission to the Gentiles challenged the nascent Church to make an imaginative leap of faith in a new direction. It would require an education of the heart.

The Book of Jonah describes the education of Jonah’s heart. Jonah seems unable to imagine God’s desire to save all people, even Ninevites. Loving and losing the gourd plant gives Jonah an inkling of God’s love for all and of God’s reluctance to lose any.

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