September 10, 2025
Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 439
Reading 1
Brothers and sisters:
If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and the greed that is idolatry.
Because of these the wrath of God is coming upon the disobedient.
By these you too once conducted yourselves, when you lived in that way.
But now you must put them all away:
anger, fury, malice, slander,
and obscene language out of your mouths.
Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed, for knowledge,
in the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew,
circumcision and uncircumcision,
barbarian, Scythian, slave, free;
but Christ is all and in all.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (9) The Lord is compassionate toward all his
works.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
R. The Lord is compassionate toward all his works.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
R. The Lord is compassionate toward all his works.
Making known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R. The Lord is compassionate toward all his works.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Rejoice and leap for joy!
Your reward will be great in heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Raising his eyes toward his disciples Jesus said:
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for the Kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.
"Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
For their ancestors treated the prophets
in the same way.
But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
But woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091025.cfm
Commentary on
Colossians 3:1-11
Just before today’s passage, Paul had been warning the
Colossians against false beliefs and practices. These involved the observance
of ‘New Moons’ and ‘Sabbaths’. He tells them not to be misled by people who
choose to grovel to angels:
Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on
self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without
cause by a human way of thinking… (Col 2:18)
Such people, he says, have no connection with:
…the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held
together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God. (Col
2:19)
Their lives are being governed by all kinds of rules and
petty regulations which are “simply human commands and teachings”—’Do not pick
up this, do not eat that, do not touch something else.’ It is not unusual for
some Christians today to become obsessed with these kinds of trivialities and
miss the big picture—working with Christ to build the Kingdom of God on earth.
Having warned the Colossians about the futility of all kinds
of external, ritualistic observances which it seems they were getting involved
in, Paul asks them in today’s reading to focus on just one thing—Christ:
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
There are two interlocking elements in today’s reading: the
first deals with the believer’s relationship with Christ, and the second speaks
of the behaviour which should naturally follow from that relationship.
As to the believers’ position in Christ: they are as dead;
they have been raised with Christ; they are already with Christ in heaven
(“hidden with Christ”); they have:
…stripped off the old self…and have clothed yourselves
with the new self.
The second element speaks of how the believers are to behave
as a result: they are to set their heart (or mind) on things above; they are to
put to death practices that belong to their earthly nature; and they are to rid
themselves of practices that characterise their unredeemed selves. In summary,
they are called upon to become, in their daily experiences, what they are in
essence through their vocation in Christ.
Hence, their thoughts are to be on things above, not on the
things that are on the earth. This is not a literal looking up to ‘heaven’, but
rather making sure that the thinking guiding their actions is solidly rooted in
all that God stands for. They are not to identify themselves with the
‘world’—that part of our experience which is remote from, or opposed to, God’s
way.
And the reason Paul gives is because:
…you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in
God.
They have not literally died, but all links with whatever is
opposed to Christ have died in them. They are “hidden with Christ” in the sense
that their whole being is totally immersed in the person and the vision of
Christ and that brings them into close relationship with God. That is the
ideal, of course; it takes a lifetime to make it a reality in practice.
And when Christ in his fullness and glory is revealed and,
because we have become fully identified with him, then we too will be revealed
together with him in glory. Through union with Christ in baptism, his followers
already live the identical life he lives in heaven; we have already risen with
him, but this spiritual life is not yet manifest and glorious as it will be at
the Parousia.
Our identity with Christ—which includes both Christ’s gift
to us of his life and our positive response to his call—must result in a way of
life that is totally in harmony with that identity. So Paul now warns the
Colossians of the kind of behaviour which should have no part in a Christian’s
life:
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is
idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are
disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living
that life. But now you must get rid of all such things: anger, wrath, malice,
slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
He highlights “greed” as a form of idolatry. Perhaps it is
the main idol that is worshipped in the prosperous parts of the world today.
There exists an obsession with ownership and the power and status that
ownership brings, as well as a constant urge to buy, buy, buy things of which
we have no need.
On one level, our union with the Risen Christ and our
sharing in his death and resurrection through baptism is immediate and total.
Yet, at the practical level of life on earth, this union has to be grown into
gradually and we do that by ridding ourselves of the kind of behaviour Paul
mentions. Paul has said that we are already “dead” in Christ and “hidden with
Christ in God”, but on the practical level, that dying and being reborn is
something that we have to work on every day, by ‘putting to death’ the old and
sinful self.
And then he gives some more examples of the things the
Colossians need to die to, behaviour which marked their pre-Christian lives,
but which now should be removed from their life: “anger, wrath, malice,
slander, and abusive language from your mouth.” As the French say, ‘Plus ça
change, plus c’est la même chose’ (meaning, ‘The more things change, the more
things stay the same’). All the examples Paul mentions are found every day in
our media and played out in people’s lives.
With the abandoning of the old pre-Christian self, there
must also be the abandonment of the old ways of doing and relating:
…you have stripped off the old self with its practices.
Just as one takes off dirty clothes and puts on clean ones,
so Christians are called upon to renounce their evil ways and live in
accordance with the ways of Christ’s Kingdom.
Instead you have:
…clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being
renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
The human race, which was to have been in the ‘image of God’
(Gen 1:26), lost its way outside and apart from the will of God, and became the
slave of sin and sinful urges. This is the ‘old self’ (Greek, anthropos)
that must die; the ‘new self’ is reborn in Christ, who is the true image of God
and, in his humanity, the true image of what it is to be human.
And, when we have taken on this ‘new self’, this new way of
being fully human:
…there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and
uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free…
‘Barbarians’ were those who did not speak Greek and hence
were deemed uncivilised; Scythians, who came originally from what is now
southern Russia, were known especially for their brutality and considered by
other peoples as little better than wild animals. In many ways, this
understanding of humanity was a huge advance in human relations.
There can then be only one conclusion, that:
…Christ is all and in all!
Jesus is the paradigm for all human thinking and acting and
relating. It is the central theme of the whole letter. Christ is the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the Word of God to be listened to
and followed:
Let anyone with ears listen! (Matt 11:15)
All lesser ‘gods’ need to be abandoned, and we all certainly
have our lesser gods. What are mine?
Christ is our Lord and he is also our Brother and his Father
is the Father of every single person. Hence, the new creation will not be
divided into races and religions and cultures and social classes in the way the
present creation has been since the Fall. Christ transcends all barriers and
unifies people from all cultures, races and nations. Such distinctions are no
longer significant; Christ alone matters.
Again, that is the ideal, but in the more than 2,000 years
since these words were written, we have still such a long way to go. And, far
from being the model of unity we are called to be, Christians themselves are
deeply divided, contemptuous and unaccepting of each other. Charles Schulz’s
character, Charlie Brown, put it very well many years ago: “I love mankind;
it’s people I can’t stand.” In church, we profess a great love for all mankind.
What happens with all those people we bump into in the street?
Clearly this reading gives much room for personal and
community reflection. It is as relevant to us, wherever we are today, as it was
for the Christians of Colossae and Laodicea.
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Commentary on Luke
6:20-26
Today we begin what is known as Luke’s ‘Sermon on the
Plain’, which more or less parallels Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Luke’s is
much shorter, but both begin with the Beatitudes and end with the parable of
the house builders. Some of what is found in Matthew’s Sermon is found
elsewhere in Luke, because Matthew’s Sermon consists of disparate sayings of
Jesus gathered into one place. Luke also omits Matthew’s specifically Jewish
material which would not have been relevant to his gentile readers.
Luke’s Sermon can be summarised as follows:
- An
introduction of blessings and woes (vv 20-26)
- The
love of one’s enemies (vv 27-36)
- The
demands of loving one’s neighbour (vv 37-42)
- Good
deeds as proof of one’s goodness (vv 43-45)
- A
parable on listening to and acting on the words of Jesus (vv 46-49)
Similar to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s Sermon on
the Plain begins with his version of the Beatitudes. But there are striking
differences. Whereas Matthew has eight (some would say seven) Beatitudes, Luke
has four “Blesseds” and four contrasting “Woes”. As is typical of his
uncompromising style when it comes to following Jesus, the language of Luke is
much more direct and hard-hitting, and it may well be closer to what Jesus
actually said.
Matthew’s Beatitudes propose a set of attitudes which
reflect the spirit of the Kingdom—qualities to be found in the truly Christian
and human life. Luke, on the other hand, speaks of material conditions in this
life which will be overturned. Later in this Gospel, this is illustrated
graphically in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-30).
Luke also has Jesus speaking in the second person: “Blessed
are you” and “Woe to you“, rather than in the third
person as Matthew does (“Blessed are those who…”). Nor does he speak of the
“poor in spirit”, but of “you who are poor”, and he certainly means the
materially poor.
He goes on to say how blessed too are:
…you who are hungry…you who weep…you when people hate you
and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of
Man.
Undoubtedly Matthew’s Beatitudes can be read to consider
just spiritual poverty and a hunger for righteousness, which in fact are also a
form of real poverty and real hunger. In contrast, Luke’s is a Gospel for the
materially poor and distressed, and we must be careful not to turn our focus
away from them. That is why he has Jesus being born in poverty and dying naked
and destitute (of even his ‘friends’).
Jesus tells those who are poor and hungry and abused to:
…Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your
reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the
prophets.
And this is the way Jesus the Prophet will also be treated.
In a first read, it seems like a classical example of
religion as the ‘opium of the people’: Be happy that you are having such a hard
time now because there is a wonderful future waiting for you in the next world
(as was mockingly described by the atheist Karl Marx).
The second part is not likely to go down well in our
contemporary developed world:
- But
woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
- Woe
to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
- Woe
to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
- Woe
to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated
the false prophets.
How are we to understand these sayings which turn our common
worldview upside down? They have to be seen in the light of the Kingdom, in the
kind of society that Jesus came to set up, a society based on mutual love and
sharing and support. This is a Kingdom for this world and not just the next.
The coming of such a society could only be good news for the poor and destitute
(material and otherwise), for those suffering from hunger (physical and
otherwise), for those depressed by deep sorrow and for those abused and
rejected for their commitment to Jesus and his Way.
On the other hand, it would not be good news for those
self-focused people who amass material wealth at the expense of others, who
indulge in excessive consumption of the world’s goods, who live lives centred
on personal hedonism and pleasure, and who feed off the envy and adulation of
those around them. They are really not part of that Kingdom. To enter fully
into the Kingdom, they have to unload all these concerns and obsessions and let
go. Instead of focusing on what they can get, they will have to focus on what
they can share of what they have.
A clear example is the rich young man in the Gospel. How
rich he was—and yet how sad he was! Compare him with Zacchaeus, whom we will be
meeting later on.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1234g/
Wednesday,
September 10, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
God our Father, you redeem us
and make us your children in
Christ. Look upon us, give us true freedom and bring us to the inheritance you
promised.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 6: 20-26
Then fixing his eyes on his
disciples Jesus said: How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is
yours.
Blessed are you who are hungry
now: you shall have your fill. Blessed are you who are weeping now: you shall
laugh.
‘Blessed are you when people hate
you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as criminal, on account of
the Son of man.
Rejoice when that day comes and dance for
joy, look!-your reward will be great in heaven. This was the way their
ancestors treated the prophets. But alas for you who are rich: you are having
your consolation now.
Alas for you who have plenty to
eat now: you shall go hungry. Alas for you who are laughing now: you shall
mourn and weep.
‘Alas for you when everyone speaks well of you! This was the
way their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Reflection
The Gospel today presents four blessings and four curses in
Luke’s Gospel. There is a progressive revelation in the way in which Luke
presents the teaching of Jesus. Up to 6: 16, he says many times, that Jesus
taught the people, but he did not describe the content of the teaching (Lk 4:
15, 31-32, 44; 5: 1, 3, 15, 17; 6: 6). Now, after having said that Jesus sees
the crowd desirous to hear the Word of God, Luke presents the first great
discourse which begins with the exclamation: “Blessed are you who are poor!”
And “Alas for you, rich!” and then takes up all the rest of the chapter (Lk 6:
12-49). Some call this Discourse the “Discourse of the Plain” because,
according to Luke, Jesus came down from the mountain and stopped in a place
which was plain and there he pronounced his discourse. In Matthew’s Gospel, this
same discourse is given on the mountain (Mt 5: 1) and is called “The Sermon on
the Mountain.” In Matthew, in this discourse there are eight Beatitudes, which
trace a program of life for the Christian communities of Jewish origin. In
Luke, the sermon is shorter and more radical. It contains only four Beatitudes
and four curses, directed to the Hellenistic communities, formed by rich and
poor. This discourse of Jesus will be meditated on in the daily Gospel of the
next days.
•
Luke 6: 20: Blessed
are you, poor! Looking at the disciples, Jesus declares: “Blessed are you
who are poor, the Kingdom of Heaven is yours!” This declaration identifies the
social category of the disciples. They are poor! And Jesus promises to them:
“The Kingdom is yours!” It is not a promise made for the future. The verb is in
the present. The Kingdom belongs to them already. They are blessed now. In the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes explicit the sense of this and says: “Blessed
are the poor in spirit!” (Mt 5: 3). They are the poor who have the Spirit of
Jesus; because there are some poor who have the mentality of the rich. The
disciples of Jesus are poor and have the mentality of the poor. Like Jesus,
they do not want to accumulate, but they assume their poverty and with him,
they struggle for a more just life together, where there will be fraternity and
sharing of goods, without any discrimination.
•
Luke 6: 21-22: Blessed are you, who now hunger and weep. In the second and third
Beatitude, Jesus says: “Blessed are who are hungry now, because you shall have
your full! Blessed are you, who are weeping now, you shall laugh!” One part of
the phrase is in the present and the other in the future. What we live and
suffer now is not definitive; what is definitive is the Kingdom of God which we
are constructing with the force of the Spirit of Jesus. To construct the
Kingdom presupposes pain, suffering and persecution, but something is certain:
the Kingdom will be attained, and you will have your fill and you will laugh!”
•
Luke 6: 23: Blessed
are you when people hate you...! The fourth Beatitude refers to the future:
“Blessed are you when people hate you, drive you out on account of the Son of
Man!” Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, look, your reward will be
great in heaven. This was the way your ancestors treated the prophets!” With
these words of Jesus, Luke encourages the communities of his time, because they
were persecuted. Suffering is not death rattle, but the pain of birth pangs. It
is a source of hope! Persecution was a sign that the future that had been
announced by Jesus was arriving, being reached. The communities were following
the right path.
•
Luke 6: 24-25: Alas for you who are rich! Alas for you who now have your fill and
who laugh! After the four Beatitudes in favour of the poor and of the excluded,
follow four threats or curses against the rich and those for whom everything
goes well and are praised by everybody. The four threats have the same
identical literary form as the four Beatitudes. The first one is expressed in
the present. The second and the third one have a part in the present and
another part in the future. And the fourth one refers completely to the future.
These threats are found only in Luke’s Gospel and not in that of Matthew. Luke
is more radical in denouncing injustices.
•
Before Jesus, on the plains there are no rich
people. There are only sick and poor people, who have come from all parts (Lk
6: 17-19). But Jesus says: “Alas for you the rich!” And this because Luke, in
transmitting these words of Jesus, is thinking more of the communities of his
time. In those communities there are rich and poor people, and there is
discrimination of the poor on the part of the rich, the same discrimination
which marked the structure of the Roman Empire (cf. Jm 5: 1-6; Rv 3: 17-19).
Jesus criticizes the rich very hard and directly: You rich have already
received consolation! You are already filled, but you are still hungry! Now you
are laughing, but you will be afflicted and will weep! This is a sign that for
Jesus poverty is not something fatal, nor the fruit of prejudices, but it is
the fruit of unjust enrichment on the part of others.
•
Luke 6: 26: Alas
for you when everyone speaks well of you, because this was the way their
ancestors treated the false prophets! This fourth threat refers to the sons
of those who in the past praised the false prophets; because some authority of
the Jews used its prestige and authority to criticize Jesus.
Personal Questions
•
Do we look at life and at persons with the same
look of Jesus? What do you think in your heart: is a poor and hungry person
truly happy? The stories which we see on Television and the propaganda of the
market, what ideal of happiness do they present?
•
In saying: “Blessed are the poor,” did Jesus
want to say that the poor have to continue to be poor?
Concluding Prayer
Upright in all that he does, Yahweh
acts only in faithful love. He is close to all who call upon him, all who call
on him from the heart. (Ps 145: 17-18)
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