TWENTY-NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Friday

Year I

Readings

First Reading
Rom 7:18–25a

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 119:66, 68, 76, 77, 93, 94

Gospel
Lk 12:54–59

Meditation on Today’s Readings

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

The need to discern the present time and to decide for Jesus is reiterated in today’s Gospel reading—with two added features. First, Jesus insists that each one must make this decision for himself or herself. “Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” he asks. The short parable that concludes the reading makes the second point. In Matthew, this parable is part of a lesson in the Sermon on the Mount on how Jesus’ followers should deal with one another. In Luke, however, the setting is Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. Here the opponent is not a fellow Christian, but Jesus himself who urges all he meets to decide, that is, “to settle the matter on the way.”

The two first readings for today illustrate the challenge of this decision. The law of sin that Paul describes in Romans, that centrifugal pull away from the law of God, makes impossible a decision that would recenter the whole of life, impossible except for the grace of God. Grace also makes it possible for us, as well as for the Ephesians, to live lives worthy of the calling we have received.

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