TWENTY-SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Friday

Year I

Readings

First Reading
Jl 1:13–15; 2:1–2

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 9:2–3, 6 and 16, 8–9

Gospel
Lk 11:15–26

Meditation on Today’s Readings

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

The two first readings for today are both difficult passages. The excerpt from Joel is part of a communal lament, a special liturgy during a natural disaster when a plague of locusts devastates the land. They (the locusts) are the vast army, “a people numerous and mighty,” who overspread the mountains like dawn. But this dawn brings darkness, not light, and it portends the day of the Lord. In the selection from Galatians Paul marshals no less than five passages from the Hebrew Bible in order to support his argument: the righteousness of Abraham consisted in faith and not in the works of the law.

Like Paul, Jesus too makes his argument with the help of the Hebrew Bible. “If it is by the finger of God that [I] drive out demons,” he says, “then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” This alludes to Moses, who “by the finger of God” bested Pharaoh’s magicians (cf. Ex 8:19). Here again Luke presents Jesus as a prophetic Messiah, powerful in deed as in word.

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