Monday in the seventeenth week through the year

Invitation

May I hereby draw your attention to
the daily reading of the Gospel?

This invitation wants to give the joy
of the Gospel. Everyone, no one excepted,
can experience that joy by opening their hearts
to the healing power of God’s word.

Available every day.

Consideration

The apostasy of the Israelites appears in several traditions. This is also why the liturgy places psalm 106 as an interlude. The whole episode illustrates the fickleness of the human heart and man’s unreliability. Moses’ mediating role comes out strongly in this story. His authority becomes ever greater as a spokesman for the Lord himself. One could see this episode as a foreshadowing of the continued apostasy of the people of Israel throughout the long history of the Old Testament.

FIRST READING           Ex 32, 15-24. 30-34
The people have sinned grievously against You
by making a god of gold.

From the book of Exodus

In those days, Moses went out and descended the mountain.
He had the two plates
with the text of the covenant with him,
the plates that were described on both sides;
they were described on two sides,
on the front, but also on the back.
The plates were God’s own work,
the writing was God’s own writing;
He Himself had written it there.
When Joshua heard the noise in the camp, he said to Moses:
“That looks like the noise of a battle in the camp.”
He replied:
“It is not the cheering of victors ,
nor is it wailing of vanquished,
it is singing.”
As Moses got closer to the camp
he saw the bullfighting and dancing.
He became enraged and smashed the plates
smashed against the foot of the mountain.
Then he grabbed the statue they had made,
threw it into the fire, pulverised it,
threw the ashes into the water
and made the Israelites drink it.
Then Moses asked Aaron :
“What has the people done to you ,
that you allowed them to come to such gross sin?”
Aaron replied:
“My Lord should not be angry.
“You yourself know how inclined these people are to evil.
“They asked me :
Make a god who goes before us.
For that Moses, the man who led us out of Egypt ,
we do not know what is the matter with him.
“I answered :
Let everyone who wears gold take it off.
“Then they brought me the gold,
I threw it into the fire
and so we came to this bull statue.”
The next day, Moses said to the people:
“You have sinned a lot.
“But I will go up the mountain again, to the Lord,” he said.
“Perhaps I can make atonement for your sins.”
Moses went to the Lord again and spoke:
“Alas, this people has sinned greatly against You
by making a god of gold.
“Can You not then grant them forgiveness?
“If that is not possible, then delete me
from the book which Thou hast written.”
The Lord answered Moses:
“I only delete from My book those who sin against Me.
“Bring the people to the place I have appointed for you,” he said.
“My angel will go out before you.
“But the day of retribution is coming
and then I will repay their sins to them.”

INTERLUDIUM            Ps. 106(105), 19-20, 21-22, 23

Glorify the Lord, for He does us good.
Or : Alleluia.

The people made a sacred calf by the Horeb
and threw themselves down before a cast of gold.
Their Glory they exchanged for an idol,
the image of a grass-eating ox.

They had forgotten that God had saved them,
He who had shown His power in Egypt;
who had performed miracles in Cham
and had done amazing things at the Reed Sea.

He was already thinking of letting them go
when Moses, His friend, intervened.
He begged them not to destroy them
and averted God’s wrath from them.

ALLUIA           Ps. 145(144), 13cd

Alleluia.
True is God in all His words
and holy in all He does.
Alleluia.

GOSPEL            Mt 13:31-35

The mustard seed becomes a tree,
so that the birds come to nest in its branches.

From the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to
Matthew

At that time, Jesus held out this parable to the crowd:
“The kingdom of heaven
is like a mustard seed
which someone has sown in his field.
“True, this is the very smallest seed ,
but when it has germinated
it is bigger than the other crops in the garden;
it will become a tree,
so that the birds come and nest in its branches.”
Yet another parable He told them:
“The kingdom of heaven
resembles yeast, which a woman processed into three measures of flour ,
until these were fermented in their entirety.”

All this Jesus spoke to the people in parables
and without parables He taught them nothing,
so that fulfilled
the word spoken by the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will reveal
what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.

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Laudato Si

Encyclical of

PAUS FRANCIS

On caring for the common home

The wisdom of biblical stories
65. Without repeating the whole theology of creation here,
we ask ourselves what the great biblical stories tell us about
the relationship between man and the world. The first description of the
work of creation in the book of Genesis contains God’s plan for the creation
of mankind. After the creation of man and woman, it is said that
“God saw everything He had made, and it was very good” (Gen.
1:31). The Bible teaches that every human being was created out of love,
created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen. 1:26). These
words show us the immense dignity of every human being, who is not
is something, but someone. He is capable of knowing himself, owning himself
and to set himself free and in contact with other persons”.
John Paul II recalled how the very special love the Creator
has for every human being, “which gives him an infinite dignity”.
Those committed to the defence of
human dignity can find in the Christian faith the deepest
reasons for their commitment. What a wonderful certainty it is
to know that the life of every human being will not be lost in a
hopeless chaos, in a world ruled by pure chance or by
meaningless cycles! The Creator can say to each of us:
“Before I formed you in the womb, I chose you” (Jer. 1:5).
We are included in God’s heart and therefore “each of us is the fruit
of a thought of God. Each of us is wanted, each of us is loved, each of us is needed”.

To be continued
Every day at 1 am

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