July 17, 2025
Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 392
Reading 1
Moses, hearing the voice of the LORD from the burning bush,
said to him,
"When I go to the children of Israel and say to them,
'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,'
if they ask me, 'What is his name?' what am I to tell them?"
God replied, "I am who am."
Then he added, "This is what you shall tell the children of Israel:
I AM sent me to you."
God spoke further to Moses, "Thus shall you say to the children of Israel:
The LORD, the God of your fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
has sent me to you.
"This is my name forever;
this my title for all generations.
"Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and tell them:
The LORD, the God of your fathers,
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
has appeared to me and said:
I am concerned about you
and about the way you are being treated in Egypt;
so I have decided to lead you up out of the misery of Egypt
into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites,
Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites,
a land flowing with milk and honey.
"Thus they will heed your message.
Then you and the elders of Israel
shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him:
"The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent us word.
Permit us, then, to go a three-days' journey in the desert,
that we may offer sacrifice to the LORD, our God.
"Yet I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go
unless he is forced.
I will stretch out my hand, therefore,
and smite Egypt by doing all kinds of wondrous deeds there.
After that he will send you away."
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
105:1 and 5, 8-9, 24-25, 26-27
R.(8a) The Lord remembers his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, invoke his name;
make known among the nations his deeds.
Recall the wondrous deeds that he has wrought,
his portents, and the judgments he has uttered.
R. The Lord remembers his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He remembers forever his covenant
which he made binding for a thousand generations--
Which he entered into with Abraham
and by his oath to Isaac.
R. The Lord remembers his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He greatly increased his people
and made them stronger than their foes,
Whose hearts he changed, so that they hated his people,
and dealt deceitfully with his servants.
R. The Lord remembers his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He sent Moses his servant;
Aaron, whom he had chosen.
They wrought his signs among them,
and wonders in the land of Ham.
R. The Lord remembers his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said:
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071725.cfm
Commentary on Exodus
3:11-20
We are still with Moses as he speaks with God at the burning
bush. God has asked Moses to be the leader of his people to rescue them from
their life of slavery and hardship in Egypt. And Moses has heard this with some
alarm. He feels unsuited to such a huge task. He is wanted by the Pharaoh for
the murder of an Egyptian and he had angry words with some of his countrymen,
making his acceptance even by his own people not very likely.
But God assures Moses that he will be with him all the way,
and the confirmation will come when the Hebrews will one day worship their God
on Mount Horeb. However, Moses is still not at ease with the proposed mission.
If he tells the people that the God of their fathers has sent him and they ask
“What is his name?”, what is he to tell them?
He wants to know what credentials he can bring to justify
his being leader and the truth of his message. He asks God to give his name as
proof. To know a person’s name was to have a certain power over them; to know
the name of a deity was to be sure of a hearing. By being able to give God’s
name, Moses would be able to claim a certain authority.
God replies:
I AM who I AM.
And Moses is to say to the people:
I AM has sent me to you…the God of your ancestors, the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you….This
is my name forever.
In a sense God’s words say everything and they say nothing.
The Israelites are being given a name they can use, but it does not give them,
as thought with pagan gods, a power over God—that they cannot have.
Later philosophers, of course, were to see in the name the
assertion of pure and infinite Being. God simply is and
everything else that is comes from him. But it is not likely that the authors
of Exodus had reached that level of insight.
The phrase “I AM who I AM” apparently is the source of the
word Yahweh, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. Out of
reverence for this name, the term Adonai, (Hebrew for “my Lord”)
was later used as a substitute. The word ‘Lord’ in many translations represents
this traditional usage. The word ‘Jehovah’ arose from an incorrect reading of
this name as it is written in the current Hebrew text.
We do not hesitate to use the word ‘God’ in our speech, but
we should avoid any disrespectful use of any name of God or any persons of the
Trinity, something which is all too common nowadays. Often it betrays ignorance
rather than malice. It is an ignorance of the deepest nature of God’s being. It
was Thomas Aquinas who said:
“…because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is
not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.”
(Summa Theologia)
Said more simply, we are only learning to know God when we
realise that he cannot be known. And when we use his name blasphemously, it is
ourselves we hurt, not him.
The Jerusalem Bible has a lengthy comment
on the phrase “I AM who I AM”:
“According to the Yahwistic tradition, the worship of Yahweh
went back to the days before the Flood. According to the Priestly tradition,
Yahweh revealed himself to the patriarchs under the name El-Shaddai (See Gen
17:1 and Exod 6:2-3). In this passage which belongs to the Elohistic tradition,
it is at this time that God reveals the name of Yahweh; by this name he wishes
to be invoked in future by the children of Israel. This narrative, a peak of
Old Testament revelation, presents two difficulties: the first is
philological—the etymology of the name Yahweh; the second is exegetical and
theological—the meaning of the narrative as a whole and the significance of the
revelation that it conveys.
With regard to the etymology, attempts have been made to
explain the name Yahweh (abridged forms like Yaho, Yah, and others are found in
both biblical and non-biblical texts) from various Hebrew roots, but there
seems little doubt that it is an archaic form of the verb ‘to be’.
There are two possible interpretations. First, it may be
that Yahweh is used here to imply the impossibility of giving an adequate
definition of God. In semitic thought, knowledge of a name gave power over the
thing named; to know a god’s name was to be able to call on him and be certain
of a hearing. The true God does not make himself man’s slave in this way by
revealing a name expressive of his essence; this refusal to reveal is contained
in the formula Ehyeh asher ehyeh (‘I am who I am’) which, in
the third person, becomes Yahweh, ‘He is’. Understood in this fashion the name
does not define God; nevertheless, for Israel it will always call to mind God’s
great deliverance of his chosen people and the divine generosity, fidelity and
power that prompted it. In Christian thought, this interpretation brings out
the transcendence of a God for whom man can never find a worthy name.
Second, tradition, however, following the Septuagint, has
commonly preferred to take Ehyeh asher ehyeh as meaning ‘I am
the One who is’, ‘I am who I am’. The name Yahweh, ‘He is’, would then express
not necessarily the absolute nature of God’s essence as a later philosophy and
theology were to state it, but least God’s unlimited existence as opposed to
the ‘nothingness’ of the gods (see Is 42:8 and following).”
Moses is then told the message he is to bring to the
Hebrews. The elders of the people, as their representatives, are to be called
together. They are to be told that the God of their ancestors has appeared to Moses.
He has told Moses of his concern for the people’s sufferings and has decided to
lead them out into:
…the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites,
the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and
honey.
God assures Moses that the people will heed his message.
Moses and the elders are to approach the Pharaoh and tell him that their God
has sent the Hebrews a message. They are to say to the Pharaoh:
The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; let us
now go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice to
the Lord our God.
But God tells Moses that he knows the Pharaoh will not give
his permission for this unless his hand is forced. In that case. God says:
I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my
wonders [a reference to the Ten Plagues] that I will perform
in it; after that he will let you go.
Over the centuries, philosophers and theologians have led us
to very deep understanding of the nature of God. We also learn much about God
from the revelation that comes to us through Jesus Christ. Much of what Jesus
reveals goes far beyond what we might come to know by reason alone. To know our
God ever more deeply and become closer to him and his way of seeing life is
really the only thing that matters.
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Commentary on
Matthew 11:28-30
The Gospel in many of its passages is very demanding and
requires an unconditional commitment to the following of Christ. We have
seen that clearly in the contrast Jesus made between the demands of the Law and
what he expected from his followers. But again and again, that is
balanced by the other side of God—his compassion and his understanding of our
weakness and frailty.
Today Jesus invites:
Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy
burdens, and I will give you rest.
He seems to be referring to the burden of the Law and the
many other legalistic observances which had accumulated over the
generations. In fact there was a common rabbinic metaphor which spoke of
the ‘yoke of the Law’. We will see some of this in the two remaining
readings of this week. Jesus did not have much time for this kind of
religion. He invites us to come to him instead, and experience comfort
and consolation.
Jesus invites us to take on his yoke instead. A yoke
can be heavy, but it makes it easier for an ox to pull a cart or a
plough. Jesus’ yoke is the yoke of love. On the one hand, it
restricts us from acting in certain ways, but at the same time it points us in
the right direction. In the long run, it has a liberating effect.
It is not unlike the idea of the “narrow gate” which Jesus invites us to go
through rather than follow the wide road to nowhere (Matt 7:13-14).
Jesus asks us to learn from him in his gentleness and
humility. This was in stark contrast to the severity and arrogance of
other religious leaders. Not only are we to experience the gentleness of
Jesus, we are also to practise it in our own dealings with others.
Another lovely idea that has been expressed arises from the
observation that it was quite common for farmers to use double yokes, with two
animals pulling a cart together. The thought is that Jesus is offering to share
his yoke with me, so that Jesus and I will pull together and thus split the
work. In any case, Jesus assures us that his yoke is easy and his burden is
light.
Jesus expects us to give all of ourselves to him, but when
we do so, we discover that what he asks is absolutely right for us. To
follow Jesus is not to carry a great weight, but to experience a great sense of
liberation. If we have not found that experience yet, then we are not yet
carrying the yoke of Jesus.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1155g/
Thursday,
July 17, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
God our
Father, Your light of truth guides us to the way of Christ. May all who follow
Him reject what is contrary to the Gospel.
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 - Matthew 11: 28-30
Jesus said: "Come to
me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will
find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
Reflection
The Gospel today is composed
of only three verses (Mt 11: 28-30) which form part of a brief literary unit,
one of the most beautiful ones, in which Jesus thanks the Father for having
revealed the wisdom of the Kingdom to the little children and because He has
hidden it from the doctors and the wise (Mt 11: 25-30). In the brief commentary
which follows we will include the entire literary unit. • Matthew 11: 25-26: Only the little
children accept and understand the Good News of the Kingdom. Jesus recites a
prayer: “I thank You Father, Lord of Heaven and of earth, for hiding these
things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children.”
The wise, the doctors of that time, have created a system of laws which they
imposed on the people in the name of God (Mt 23: 3-4). They thought that God
demanded this observance from the people. But the law of love, which Jesus has
revealed to us, said the contrary. What is important in order to be saved is
not what we do for God, but what God, in His great love, does for us! God wants
mercy and not sacrifice (Mt 9: 13). The simple and poor people understood
Jesus’ way of speaking and rejoiced. The wise said that Jesus was in error.
They could not come to understand His teaching. “Yes, I praise you! He praised
the Father that the little children understand the message of the Kingdom
despite it being hidden from the wise and the learned! If they want to
understand it they have to become the pupils of the little children! This way
of thinking and of teaching makes people feel uncomfortable.
•
Matthew 11: 27: The origin of the new Law: the Son
knows the Father. What the Father has to tell us He has given to Jesus, and
Jesus reveals it to the little children, so that they may be open to His
message. Jesus, the Son, knows the Father. He knows what the Father wanted to
communicate to us, when many centuries ago He gave His Law to Moses. Today,
Jesus is teaching many things to the poor and to the little children and,
through them, to all His Church.
•
Matthew 11: 28-30: The invitation of Jesus which is
still valid today. Jesus invites all those who are tired to go to Him, and He
promises them rest. In our communities today, we should be the continuation of
this invitation which Jesus addresses to people who were tired and oppressed by
the weight of the observance asked by the laws of purity. He says, “Learn from
Me for I am meek and humble of heart.” Many times, this saying has been
manipulated, to ask people for submission, meekness and passivity. Jesus wants
to say the opposite. He asks people not to listen to “the wise and learned,”
the professors of religion of that time, and to begin to learn from Him, from
Jesus, a man who came from Galilee, without higher instruction, who says He is
“meek and humble of heart.” Jesus does not do as the scribes, who exalt
themselves because of their science, but He places Himself at the side of the
people who are exploited and humiliated. Jesus, the new Master, knows by
experience what takes place in the heart of the people who suffer. He has lived
this well and has known it during the thirty years of His life in Nazareth.
•
How Jesus puts into practice what He taught in the
Discourse on the Mission. Jesus has a passion: to announce the Good News of the
Kingdom. He had a passion for the Father and for the people of His country who
are poor and abandoned. There, where Jesus found people who listened to Him, Jesus
announced the Good News, in any place: In the synagogues during the celebration
of the Word (Mt 4: 23), in the houses of friends (Mt 13: 36); walking along the
way with the disciples (Mt 12: 1-8); along the shore of the sea, sitting in the
boat (Mt 13: 3); on the Mount from where He proclaims the Beatitudes (Mt 5: 1);
in the squares and in the cities, where people would bring the sick to Him (Mt
14: 34-36). Also in the Temple of Jerusalem, during the pilgrimage (Mt 26: 55)!
In Jesus everything is revelation of everything which He bore inside Himself!
He not only announced the Good News of the Kingdom; He Himself was and
continues to be a living sign of the Kingdom. In Him we see clearly what
happens when a human being allows God to reign in his life. Today’s Gospel
reveals the tenderness with which Jesus welcomes the little children. He wanted
them to find rest and peace. And because of this choice of His for the little
children and the excluded, He was criticized and persecuted. He suffered very
much! The same thing happens today. When a community tries to open itself to be
a place of welcome and consolation for the little children and the excluded of
today who are the foreigners and the migrants, many people do not agree and
criticize.
Personal Questions
Have you ever experienced
the rest promised by Jesus?
•
How can the words of Jesus help our community to be a
place of rest for our life?
•
How can one be meek and humble while at the same time
striving for promotion or advancement at work or in the community?
•
To follow Jesus requires radical change. How can this
be an easy yoke or a light burden?
Concluding Prayer
In You is the source of
life, by Your light we see the light.
Continue
Your faithful love to those who acknowledge You, and Your saving justice to the
honest of heart. (Ps 36: 9-10)
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