EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Tuesday

Year II

Readings

First Reading
1 Pt 1:10–16

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 98:1, 2–3ab, 3cd–4

Gospel
Mk 10:28–31

Meditation on Today’s Readings

In today’s Gospel, Jesus promises the hundredfold to all who have left everything to follow him. Such total renunciation and reliance on God goes beyond the rules and rituals of religious observance. This is the sense of Sirach’s words, when he says that the worship most pleasing to God consists in justice and generosity.

Jesus assures Peter that God’s response to such total self-giving is made “in this present age” as well as “in the age to come.” In the present, the disciples are given back everything they thought they had left—with one exception. Jesus says they will receive “a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands”—but not fathers. This is not to exclude male parents from the community of Jesus. It is rather to ensure that that community remains free of male domination. In the community of Jesus’ disciples there is one Father, only one—and that is the Holy One who, as Peter writes, calls us to be holy

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