WDTPRS 25th Ordinary Sunday: Do you have unfinished business?
This week’s Collect, for the 25th Ordinary Sunday, was introduced into the Missale Romanum with the Novus Ordo but it is influenced by a prayer in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary.
Deus, qui sacrae legis omnia constituta in tua et proximi dilectione posuisti, da nobis, ut, tua praecepta servantes, ad vitam mereamur pervenire perpetuam.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father, guide us, as you guide creation according to your law of love. May we love one another and come to perfection in the eternal life prepared for us.
LITERAL ATTEMPT:
O God, who placed all things of the sacred law which were constituted in the love of You and of neighbor, grant us that we, observing Your precepts, may merit to attain to eternal life.
This Collect seems to be founded on the exchange between Jesus and a lawyer:
“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On
these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets’” (Matthew 22:3440).
St Thomas Aquinas (+1274) glossed this verse in his Commentary on Saint Matthew: when man is loved, God is loved, since man is the image of God.
In 1 John 4:21 there is a good explanation of this double precept: “This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.”
All of the Law is summed up in Jesus’ two-fold command of love of God and neighbor. The
first part of the two-fold law is about unconditional love of God. The second follows as its
consequence.
We must cultivate our different loves in their proper order. God comes first, always. Always.
A married person must love God more even than a spouse. We must never put any creature,
no matter how proximate to us in our hearts, closer than the God in whose image and likeness we are made. When this logical priority is properly in place, love of God and neighbor will not conflict or compete. Each love fuels the other, when love of God is first.
Today’s Collect reestablishes that we have a special relationship with each person who lives,
and not merely with God alone. People are made in God’s image. They are our neighbors,
though some are closer to us than others. But there is no person on earth who is not in some way our neighbor.
This reciprocal relationship calls to mind another act of reciprocity which the Lord teaches us: forgive or you will not be forgiven.
When our Saviour taught us how to pray what we now call the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-
13), the first thing he then explained and stressed was forgiveness: “For if you forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (vv 14-15).
It is often hard to forgive.
The second section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church digs into the Lord’s Prayer. When we get to the examination of “…as we forgive those who trespass against us” we read (2842):
“This ‘as’ is not unique in Jesus’ teaching: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect’; ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’; ‘A new
commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you,
that you also love one another.’ It is impossible to keep the Lord’s commandment by
imitating the divine model from outside; there has to be a vital participation, coming
from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God.
Only the Spirit by whom we live can make ‘ours’ the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Then the unity of forgiveness becomes possible and we find ourselves ‘forgiving one
another, as God in Christ forgave us.’”
When it is your time to go to Your Lord, will you be well-reconciled with the neighbors you
leave behind? Our time will come. Let us pray daily that we will not die without the solace and strengthening of the sacraments and an opportunity to make peace with our neighbor.
Do you have unfinished business?
CURRENT ICEL (2011):
O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law upon love of you and of our
neighbor, grant that, by keeping your precepts, we may merit to attain eternal life.
| Mark | |||
| English: Douay-Rheims | Latin: Vulgata Clementina | Greek NT: Byzantine/Majority Text (2000) | |
| Mark 9 |
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| 30. | 9:29 And departing from thence, they passed through Galilee, and he would not that any man should know it. | 9:29 Et inde profecti prætergrediebantur Galilæam : nec volebat quemquam scire. | και εκειθεν εξελθοντες παρεπορευοντο δια της γαλιλαιας και ουκ ηθελεν ινα τις γνω |
| 31. | 9:30 And he taught his disciple, and said to them: The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise again the third day. | 9:30 Docebat autem discipulos suos, et dicebat illis : Quoniam Filius hominis tradetur in manus hominum, et occident eum, et occisus tertia die resurget. | εδιδασκεν γαρ τους μαθητας αυτου και ελεγεν αυτοις οτι ο υιος του ανθρωπου παραδιδοται εις χειρας ανθρωπων και αποκτενουσιν αυτον και αποκτανθεις τη τριτη ημερα αναστησεται |
| 32. | 9:31 But they understood not the word, and they were afraid to ask him. | 9:31 At illi ignorabant verbum : et timebant interrogare eum. | οι δε ηγνοουν το ρημα και εφοβουντο αυτον επερωτησαι |
| 33. | 9:32 And they came to Capharnaum. And when they were in the house, he asked them: What did you treat of in the way? | 9:32 Et venerunt Capharnaum. Qui cum domi essent, interrogabat eos : Quid in via tractabatis ? | και ηλθεν εις καπερναουμ και εν τη οικια γενομενος επηρωτα αυτους τι εν τη οδω προς εαυτους διελογιζεσθε |
| 34. | 9:33 But they held their peace, for in the way they had disputed among themselves, which of them should be the greatest. | 9:33 At illi tacebant : siquidem in via inter se disputaverunt : quis eorum major esset. | οι δε εσιωπων προς αλληλους γαρ διελεχθησαν εν τη οδω τις μειζων |
| 35. | 9:34 And sitting down, he called the twelve, and saith to them: If any man desire to be first, he shall be the last of all, and the minister of all. | 9:34 Et residens vocavit duodecim, et ait illis : Si quis vult primus esse, erit omnium novissimus, et omnium minister. | και καθισας εφωνησεν τους δωδεκα και λεγει αυτοις ει τις θελει πρωτος ειναι εσται παντων εσχατος και παντων διακονος |
| 36. | 9:35 And taking a child, he set him in the midst of them. Whom when he had embraced, he saith to them: | 9:35 Et accipiens puerum, statuit eum in medio eorum : quem cum complexus esset, ait illis : | και λαβων παιδιον εστησεν αυτο εν μεσω αυτων και εναγκαλισαμενος αυτο ειπεν αυτοις |
| 37. | 9:36 Whosoever shall receive one such child as this in my name, receiveth me. And whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me. | 9:36 Quisquis unum ex hujusmodi pueris receperit in nomine meo, me recipit : et quicumque me susceperit, non me suscipit, sed eum qui misit me. | ος εαν εν των τοιουτων παιδιων δεξηται επι τω ονοματι μου εμε δεχεται και ος εαν εμε δεξηται ουκ εμε δεχεται αλλα τον αποστειλαντα με |