September 9, 2025
Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest
Lectionary: 438
Reading 1
Brothers and sisters:
As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him,
rooted in him and built upon him
and established in the faith as you were taught,
abounding in thanksgiving.
See to it that no one captivate you with an empty, seductive philosophy
according to the tradition of men,
according to the elemental powers of the world
and not according to Christ.
For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily,
and you share in this fullness in him,
who is the head of every principality and power.
In him you were also circumcised
with a circumcision not administered by hand,
by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ.
You were buried with him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the power of God,
who raised him from the dead.
And even when you were dead in transgressions
and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
he brought you to life along with him,
having forgiven us all our transgressions;
obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims,
which was opposed to us,
he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross;
despoiling the principalities and the powers,
he made a public spectacle of them,
leading them away in triumph by it.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (9) The Lord is compassionate toward all his
works.
I will extol you, O my God and King,
and I will bless your name forever and ever.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
R. The Lord is compassionate toward all his works.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
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.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I chose you from the world,
that you may go and bear fruit that will last, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground.
A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured.
Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090925.cfm
Commentary on
Colossians 2:6-15
We come now to the instruction part of the letter with some
warnings against errors into which the Colossians were reported to be falling.
As we saw in yesterday’s reading (Monday of Week 23), they were apparently
being carried away by a fascination with various cosmic powers and angelic
forces. Paul begins by telling the Colossians that, since they have received
Jesus as their Lord and Christ (Messiah), their lives should be totally rooted
in him and built on him. They will be held firm by the faith which was passed
on to them and they should be filled with expressions of thanksgiving.
But then comes the warning. They are to make sure that they
are not made captive by the lure of some kind of ‘philosophy’, a set of ideas
that comes from humans and which is based on the principles of the world, but
not on Christ. To deny or abandon Christ after he has liberated them from the
tyranny of ‘darkness’ by going back to error is nothing else than to undergo a
new slavery.
As he did earlier, Paul goes on to refute the ideas with
which the Colossians had been toying, ideas that the world was governed by
cosmic angels of some kind. It is in Christ and only in him, in bodily form,
that the divinity lives in all its fullness.
The word “fullness” (Greek, pleroma) here is
defined as the ‘divinity’ that is now ‘filling’ Christ in his human body. In
other words, the risen Christ, through his incarnation and resurrection, unites
together the divine and the created. In this way, he himself is the pleroma of
all possible categories of created being.
And it is in Christ, too, that the Colossians find their own
fulfilment, in the One who is the head of every sovereignty and ruling force. A
Christian shares this pleroma of Christ by being part of it,
i.e. part of Christ’s body, and as a consequence of this, humans are raised to
be higher than even the highest grade of angel. Paul then also reminds them
that they have been circumcised, but with a special kind of circumcision. Here
he is likely speaking to the Jewish Christians. There may have been some
backsliding on their part and others coming under the influence of Jewish
proselytisers emphasising the importance of circumcision. The same problem is
dealt with in the letter to the Galatians.
Christian ‘circumcision’ is one performed not by human
hands, where a piece of skin is removed, but:
…a spiritual circumcision, by the removal of the body of
the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.
It is the total giving of oneself to Christ, to God—the
complete letting go of the natural self. This is circumcision according to
Christ and it is sacramentally celebrated through baptism. Baptism was done by
having the catechumen take off his or her clothes, be fully immersed in a pool
and then emerging and putting on a white garment. It was a re-enacting of the
death, burial and resurrection of Jesus himself and an expression of total
identity with him.
…you were buried with him in baptism, you were also
raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the
dead.
Then, speaking to the gentile Christians, Paul says:
And when you were dead in trespasses and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he
forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with
its legal demands.
Through our faith, that is, through our total commitment to
Jesus, we are reconciled and made one with him. No physical circumcision can
bring about this. Prior to that, they were dead, but now:
…God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us
all our trespasses…
The Colossians—both Jewish and Gentiles—are now liberated
from their debt to the Law; it no longer governs their lives. This liberation
was brought about by that debt’s being wiped out—by nailing it to the cross.
The Law was able to do nothing about a sinner except condemn
that person to death. This death sentence is what God has carried out on his
own Son in order to suppress it for the rest of the world, and it was for this
very reason that God’s Son was ‘made sin’, ‘subject to the Law’, and ‘cursed’
by the Law.
In the person of his Son, whom he allowed to be executed,
God nailed up and destroyed our death warrant, as well as all the charges it
made against us. Finally, God:
…set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the
rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them
in it.
The tradition was that the Law had been brought down to
Moses by angels, and by honouring them as the lawgivers, people became
distracted from the true Creator. Now that God has brought the regime of that
Law to an end by means of the crucifixion, these angelic powers have also lost
the one thing that had given them power, and they too must acknowledge that
Christ has triumphed over them.
Once again Paul demonstrates that Christ is supreme in
sovereignty and the angels and all other cosmic powers are subservient to him.
Christ, then, as we saw earlier, is the head of all created things and the head
of his people—his body, the Church. Before him everyone must bow.
For us, it is important that we not be misled by fads and
fashions which can come into our society or into our church. The problems the
Colossians had can be found practically everywhere in the Church and society
today. We have the paradox of an agnostic worship of science combined
with an obsession with ‘New Age’ thinking and all its eccentricities.
It is so important to realise and to experience that the
Gospel in its purity is a genuine source of freedom, because it touches the
deepest aspirations of the human spirit. Many sects and elitist groups both
within and outside the Church, however attractive, do not normally increase our
inner freedom; often they do quite the contrary.
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Commentary on Luke
6:12-19
In today’s Gospel, we move on now to a different phase in
Luke’s story and some very crucial sayings of Jesus. We are told that Jesus
went up into the mountains to pray and spent the whole night there in prayer to
God. Some might wonder what Jesus would have to pray about. Such a question may
reveal a limited concept of what prayer is. It is not just a question of asking
for things. It is even less a question of fulfilling a religious duty, i.e.
‘saying our prayers’.
Prayer is ultimately making contact with God, the beginning
and end of all things. It makes a lot of sense that Jesus would have wanted to
be in intimate contact with his Father and to spend long periods with him. One
of Jesus’ main concerns was that he do the will of his Father. Prayer was one
way of making sure that there was complete harmony with that will.
Luke’s Gospel shows Jesus at prayer more than any of the
others. He shows Jesus praying before all the important stages in his public
life.
As soon as this period of prayer was over, he called
together his disciples and from them he chose twelve as Apostles. We know that
among those who came to hear Jesus was a group, comprising both men and women,
who regularly followed him and were committed to his teachings. Elsewhere we
know of 72 such disciples who were sent out on a mission to do what Jesus was
doing. After the Ascension, we are told of 120 believers waiting for the coming
of the Spirit. It is from these that Jesus chooses 12 to be Apostles, with a
special mandate to continue his mission for the Kingdom. Although the order of
names varies in the different Gospels, the list is always headed by Peter while
Judas is placed last.
We can sometimes be rather casual in our use of the terms
‘disciples’ and ‘apostles’, but they have very distinct meanings. The word
‘disciple’ is applied to any person who commits himself to be a follower of
Jesus. The word ‘disciple’ comes from a Greek word which means ‘to learn’ (discere).
There is a passive element present, in the sense of the disciple sitting at the
feet of the guru and learning from him. Jesus’ disciples regularly called him
‘Rabbi’ or teacher. The word ‘apostle’ (Greek, apostolos), however,
has a much more active meaning. It refers to a person who goes out as an
emissary, delegated to pass on information or commands or instructions to
others on behalf of some authority.
In the Gospel, the word ‘apostle’ first applies to the
twelve people who were especially chosen by Jesus to hand on his message. They
would, after the departure of Jesus, become the foundation stones of the new
community. In them would be invested the integrity of the original message and
it would be up to them to interpret its acceptable developments. They were the
beginnings of what we call today the ‘magisterium’, the teaching body of the
Church responsible for the maintenance of the integrity of the gospel message.
In this, as in all the lists of the Apostles, the first
person listed is Simon, whose name is now changed to Peter. In Matthew, the
change is made at Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah (Matt 16:18). There
are variations of the Apostles’ names in all the lists. Bartholomew here seems
to be the same as Nathanael in John (1:45) and is associated with Philip.
Matthew seems to correspond to Levi (Mark 2:14). James, son of Alphaeus, is
probably the same as James the younger, not the brother of John (Mark 15:40).
The other Simon is called a Zealot. This could be either to describe his
religious zeal or indicate his original membership in the party of the Zealots,
a Jewish revolutionary group violently opposed to Roman rule. Judas, the son of
James is another name for Thaddaeus (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18). He is also known as
Jude to distinguish him from the other Judas, who always appears last in the
lists. ‘Iscariot’ may mean that Judas came from Kerioth. The town Kerioth
Hezron was about 19 km south of Hebron and appears in the Old Testament (Josh
15:25; Jer 48:24).
We know, of course, that one of the chosen failed utterly
and betrayed his Master. He was replaced by Matthias. Later, too, Paul—who
never saw the pre-resurrection Jesus—would be called to be an Apostle. The term
would also be applied to others in the New Testament, e.g. Barnabas, a
missionary colleague of Paul.
Secondly, however, the word ‘apostle’ applies to every
baptised Christian. All of us, one way or another, are called to pass on the
Gospel message so that others can hear and respond. There are many ways we can
do this. One thing, though, is clear—it is not enough for us simply to be
disciples, i.e. passive followers.
Immediately following the call of the Twelve comes what is
really Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. Significantly, for him it is
going to take place in a plain, down on the ground in the midst of all the
people. Luke’s version is sometimes known as the “Sermon on the Plain”. It
somehow indicates the humility of Jesus and his closeness to the people, while
Matthew uses the more biblical concept of a mountain as the place where God
reveals himself.
Jesus is surrounded by all his disciples, his newly chosen
Apostles, and a huge crowd from Judea and Jerusalem, from the sea coast of Tyre
and Sidon, including both Jews and non-Jews. They all came to listen to Jesus,
and to be healed. And they were all eager to touch him physically, because a
certain power went out from Jesus and brought healing to all.
Let us then hear today the call of Jesus, first to be his
disciples, totally committed to accepting and assimilating his message. As
well, let us accept the responsibility to spread the gospel actively through
the way we live our lives, through the way we speak and through the
relationships we establish with people. Finally, let us also reach out and
touch Jesus so that we may experience his healing wherever we need it.
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Tuesday,
September 9, 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: 12-19
Now it happened in those days
that Jesus went onto the mountain to pray; and he spent the whole night in
prayer to God. When day came, he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve
of them; he called them ‘apostles’: Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother
Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of
Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who
became a traitor.
He then came down with them and stopped at a
piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his disciples, with
a great crowd of people from all parts of Judaea and Jerusalem and the coastal
region of Tyre and Sidon who had come to hear him and to be cured of their
diseases.
People tormented by unclean spirits were also
cured, and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out
of him that cured them all.
Reflection
The Gospel today presents two f acts: the
choice of the twelve apostles (Lk 6: 1216) and the enormous crowds who want to
meet Jesus (Lk 6: 17-19). The Gospel today invites us to reflect on the Twelve
who were chosen to live with Jesus, being apostles. The first Christians
remembered and registered the name of these twelve and of some other men and
women, who followed Jesus and who, after His Resurrection, began to create the
communities for the world outside. Today, also, all remember some catechists or
persons, significant for their own Christian formation.
•
Luke 6: 12-13: The choice of the 12 apostles.
Before choosing the twelve apostles definitively, Jesus spent a whole night in
prayer. He prays in order to know whom to choose and then chooses the Twelve,
whose names are in the Gospels and they will receive the name of apostles.
Apostle means sent, missionary. They were called to carry out a mission, the
same mission that Jesus received from the Father (Jn 20: 21). Mark is more
concrete and says that God called them to be with him and he sends them on
mission (Mk 3: 14)..
•
Luke 6: 14-16: The names of the 12 Apostles.
With small differences the names of the Twelve are the same in the Gospels of
Matthew (Mt 10: 2-4), Mark (Mk 3: 16-19) and Luke (Lk 6: 14-16). The majority
of these names come from the Old Testament. For example, Simeon is the name of
one of the sons of the Patriarch Jacob (Gn 29: 33). James (Giacomo) is the same
name of Jacob (Gn 25,: 26), Judah is the name of the other son of Jacob (Gn 35:
23). Matthew also had the name of Levi (Mk 2: 14), the other son of Jacob (Gn
35: 23) Of the twelve apostles, seven have a name that comes from the time of
the Patriarchs: two times Simon, two times, James, two times Judah, and one
time Levi! That reveals the wisdom and the pedagogy of the people. Through the
names of the Patriarchs and the matriarchs, which were given to the sons and
daughters, people maintained alive the tradition of the ancestors and helped
their own children not to lose their identity. Which are the names which we
give our children today?
•
Luke 6: 17-19: Jesus goes down from the mountain
and people are looking for him. Coming down from the mountain with the twelve,
Jesus finds an immense crowd of people who were trying to hear his words and to
touch him, because people knew that from him came out a force of life. In this
crowd there were Jews and foreigners, people from Judaea and also from Tyre and
Sidon. These were people who were abandoned, disoriented. Jesus accepts all
those who look for him Jews and Pagans! This is one of the themes preferred by
Luke!
These twelve persons, called by Jesus to form
the first community, were not saints. They were common persons, like all of us.
They had their virtues and their defects. The Gospels tell us very little on
the temperament and the character of each one of them. But what they say, even
if not much is for us a reason for consolation.
•
Peter was a generous person and full of
enthusiasm (Mk 14: 29.31; Mt 14: 2829), but at the moment of danger and of
taking a decision, his heart becomes small and cannot go ahead (Mt 14: 30; Mc
14: 66-72). He was even Satan for Jesus (Mk 8: 33). Jesus calls him Rock
(Peter). Peter of himself was not ‘Pietra’
- Rock, he becomes Rock (Pietra)
because Jesus prays for him (Lc 22: 31-32).
•
James and John are ready to suffer with and for
Jesus (Mk 10: 39), but they were very violent (Lk 9: 54), Jesus calls them
“sons of thunder” (Mk 3: 17). John seemed to have some sort of envy. He wanted
Jesus only for his group (Mk 9:
38).
•
Philip had a nice welcoming way. He knew how to
put others in contact with
Jesus (Jn 1: 45- 46), but he was not
too practical in solving the problems (Jn 12:
20-22; 6: 7). Sometimes he was very naïve. There was a moment when Jesus
lost his patience with him: Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you
still do not know me? (Jn 14: 8-9).
•
Andrew, the brother of Peter and friend of
Philip, he was more practical. Philip goes to him to solve the problems (Jn 12:
21-22). Andrew calls Peter (Jn 1: 4041), and Andrew found the boy who had five
loaves of bread and two fish (Jn
6: 8-9).
•
Bartholomew seems to be the same as Nathanael.
This one was from there and could not admit that anything good could come from
Nazareth (Jn 1: 46).
•
Thomas was capable of sustaining his own
opinion, for a whole week, against the witness of all the others (Jn 20:
24-25). But when he saw that he was mistaken, he was not afraid to acknowledge
his error (Jn 20: 26-28). He was generous, ready to die with Jesus (Jn 11: 16).
•
Matthew or Levi was a Publican, a tax collector,
like Zaccheus (Mt 9: 9; Lk 19: 2). They were persons who held to the system of
oppression of that time.
•
Simon, instead, seems that he belonged to the
movement which radically opposed the system which the Roman Empire imposed on
the Jewish people. This is why he was also called Zealot (Lk 6: 15). The group
of the Zealots even succeeded to bring about an armed revolt against the
Romans.
•
Judah was the one who was in charge of the money
in the group (Jn 13: 29). He betrayed Jesus.
•
James, son of Alphaeus and Judas Taddeus. The
Gospels say nothing of these two, they only mention their name.
Personal Questions
•
Jesus spends the whole night in prayer to know
whom to choose, and then he chooses those twelve. Which conclusions can you
draw?
•
Do you recall the persons who began the
community to which you belong? What do you remember about them: the content of
what they taught or the witness they gave?
Concluding Prayer
They shall dance in praise of his name, play to him on
tambourines and harp!
For Yahweh loves his people, he will crown the humble
with salvation. (Ps 149: 3-4)
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