July 18, 2025
Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 393
Reading 1
Although Moses and Aaron performed various wonders
in Pharaoh's presence,
the LORD made Pharaoh obstinate,
and he would not let the children of Israel leave his land.
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
"This month shall stand at the head of your calendar;
you shall reckon it the first month of the year.
Tell the whole community of Israel: On the tenth of this month
every one of your families must procure for itself a lamb,
one apiece for each household.
If a family is too small for a whole lamb,
it shall join the nearest household in procuring one
and shall share in the lamb
in proportion to the number of persons who partake of it.
The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish.
You may take it from either the sheep or the goats.
You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then,
with the whole assembly of Israel present,
it shall be slaughtered during the evening twilight.
They shall take some of its blood
and apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel
of every house in which they partake of the lamb.
That same night they shall eat its roasted flesh
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
It shall not be eaten raw or boiled, but roasted whole,
with its head and shanks and inner organs.
None of it must be kept beyond the next morning;
whatever is left over in the morning shall be burned up.
"This is how you are to eat it:
with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand,
you shall eat like those who are in flight.
It is the Passover of the LORD.
For on this same night I will go through Egypt,
striking down every first born of the land, both man and beast,
and executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt—I, the LORD!
But the blood will mark the houses where you are.
Seeing the blood, I will pass over you;
thus, when I strike the land of Egypt,
no destructive blow will come upon you.
"This day shall be a memorial feast for you,
which all your generations shall celebrate
with pilgrimage to the LORD, as a perpetual institution."
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
116:12-13, 15 and 16bc, 17-18
R. (13) I will take the cup of salvation, and call
on the name of the Lord.
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
R. I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
R. I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people.
R. I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord,
I know them, and they follow me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath.
His disciples were hungry
and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them.
When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him,
"See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the
sabbath."
He said to them, "Have you not read what David did
when he and his companions were hungry,
how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering,
which neither he nor his companions
but only the priests could lawfully eat?
Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath
the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath
and are innocent?
I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.
If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
you would not have condemned these innocent men.
For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071825.cfm
Commentary on Exodus
11:10—12:14
We have skipped several chapters of Exodus to come to
today’s reading. The sufferings of the Hebrews became intolerable and
eventually God sent what we call the Ten Plagues on Egypt in order to persuade
the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave. After each one, the Pharaoh’s heart
hardened and he refused to let God’s people go.
The Ten Plagues were as follows:
- Water
turned into blood (most likely caused by a plant which discoloured the
water).
- An
infestation of frogs which penetrated every place and every home.
- An
infestation of gnats (mosquitoes?) on man and beast alike.
- A
plague of flies.
- An
epidemic which attacked all the livestock of the Egyptians, but not those
of the Hebrews.
- An
epidemic of boils on humans and beasts.
- A
fall of hail, accompanied by thunder and lightning, which killed everyone
and every animal that was in the open air.
- A
plague of locusts which devoured every plant which had survived the
previous plagues.
- Total
darkness for three days.
- The
killing of all the first-born of the Egyptians, from the Pharaoh to the
lowliest slave.
Most of these ‘plagues’ actually correspond to natural
phenomena found in Egypt. But they are represented here as supernatural, at
least in their greater intensity and in their occurring exactly according to
Moses’ command. In each of the plagues, the Hebrews were not affected, another
sign of God’s intervention in what would normally be natural calamities
affecting everyone.
With these plagues we are coming to the great finale and the
high point of the Exodus story. Nine plagues inflicted on Egypt have:
…hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the
Israelites go out of his land.
The Hebrews are now told to prepare for the final
catastrophe with which God will strike the Egyptians. As our reading opens, the
Tenth Plague has not yet taken place. It is as if, in the eyes of the author,
God wanted the Pharaoh to be hard-hearted so that eventually the situation
would become so bad that he would have no alternative.
The passage we read today is not really a historical account
of how the Hebrews actually prepared for that last night in Egypt. It consists
rather of formal instructions to a later generation on how to celebrate the
great event that is about to take place. The instructions are presented as
coming from God to Moses and Aaron.
First, the month in which it is taking place is from now on
to be regarded as “the first month of the year”. It is the month of Abib,
meaning the month of ‘young corn’ or ‘ripe grain’. It occurred around the time
of the spring equinox, in a period between March and April in our Gregorian
calendar. After the Exile it came to be known by the Babylonian name of Nisan,
the name used in later books of the Old Testament (Nehemiah 2:1 and Esther
3:7).
First, on the 10th day of that month each family is to
procure for itself a lamb. If a family is too small to finish one lamb, then it
can join with another family and they can share the lamb between them,
including perhaps the cost of purchasing it. The lamb must be male, one year
old and free from any blemish. It may be a sheep or a goat (sheep and goats are
closely related animals).
The animal is to be kept until the 14th day of the month;
then it is to be slaughtered in the presence of all the assembled Hebrews. This
should happen “at twilight”. This was understood as either between sunset and
darkness (the Samaritans) or between afternoon and sunset (the Pharisees and
the Talmud).
In every house where the lamb is to be eaten, its blood is
to be applied on the doorposts and lintel of the house. This, in a way, was the
most important requirement. On the night of the 14th day of the month, the same
evening on which it had been slaughtered, the roasted flesh of the lamb was to
be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The animal was to be roasted,
not to be eaten raw or boiled, and the whole animal, including head, limbs and
internal organs roasted as one.
Nothing must be kept over till the following morning.
Anything that is uneaten is to be burnt. This was to preclude any possible
profanation of something regarded as ‘holy’. The Greek text adds:
You shall not break a bone of it.
This requirement is also mentioned in further instructions
within the same chapter (12:46).
In John’s account of Jesus’ passion, he notes that the
soldiers, seeing that Jesus was already dead, pierced his side with a lance,
but did not break his legs, as they did with the other two men being crucified.
And he says:
These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled,
“None of his bones shall be broken.” (John 19:36)
This happened because Jesus was the Paschal Lamb of the New
Covenant.
In Exodus, they are then told:
This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your
sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it
hurriedly.
In other words, the meal is to be taken like people
preparing to make a hasty departure.
And it is to be called “the Passover of the Lord.” The
origin of the word ‘Passover’ is disputed. The word pesah (Greek, pascha)
means that Yahweh ‘leaped over’ the marked houses, as one might skip names on a
list. The word may be originally from the Egyptian, pesach, meaning
‘the blow’, that is, the final plague which is about to happen. Both meanings,
obviously, are applicable.
On this very night, the Lord would go through Egypt and
strike down every first-born in the land, humans and animals alike, and thus
pass judgement on all the gods of Egypt. But because the blood of the lambs has
been painted on all the houses of the Hebrews, when the Lord sees the blood, he
will pass over, or skip over, those houses and no harm will come to them. Hence
the name of the feast.
Then comes the final instruction to Hebrews of every future
generation:
This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall
celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall
observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
This is an instruction which Jews continue to observe to
this day.
For us Christians, all this has great meaning because we see
in it a foreshadowing of another Passover which Jesus celebrated with his
disciples. It took place at the same time as the celebration of the traditional
Jewish Passover but, because of what immediately followed, it was seen as the
sacramental anticipation of the new Passover in which Jesus is the Sacrificial
Lamb whose blood poured out becomes the instrument of our salvation and
liberation.
It is significant that, in the descriptions of the Last Supper,
no Gospel mentions the lamb as the main dish. There is now a New Passover
Lamb—Jesus himself. And in the eating of the Bread and the drinking of the
Wine, those present had ‘eaten’ and ‘drunk’ of the Lamb.
This passage from Exodus is also the First Reading of the
liturgy on Holy Thursday. It might be noted, too, that some Catholics now
celebrate during the earlier part of Holy Week a ‘seder meal’ which is a
reenactment of the Hebrew paschal supper, at which there will be cooked lamb,
unleavened bread, wine and bitter herbs.
Finally, the Jerusalem Bible has the
following comment on the feast:
The long section of the Passover and the feast of the
Unleavened Bread (12:1—13:16) combines the Yahwistic and the Priestly
traditions and some editorial additions the style of which is ‘Deuteronomic’.
With this passage should be compared the liturgical calendars of Leviticus
23:5-8, Deuteronomy 16:1-8, and the legislation of Numbers 28:16-25. The two
rites may have had separate origins: the Passover is primarily a pastoral
feast, offering the first-fruits of the flock; the feast of Unleavened Bread is
primarily agricultural, offering the first-fruits of the barley harvest. But
they were both springtime festivals and became fused at a very early date. Once
associated with a historical occurrence, that decisive event in the history of
Israel’s election, the deliverance out of Egypt, these rites took on an
entirely new religious significance: they recalled how God had saved his people
(see also the explanatory formula accompanying the rite, Exodus 12:26-27,
13:8). The Jewish Passover hence becomes a rehearsal for the Christian
Passover: the Lamb of God, Christ, is sacrificed (the cross) and eaten (the
Last Supper) within the framework of the Jewish Passover (the first Holy Week).
Thus he brings salvation to the world, and the mystical re-enactment of this
redemptive act becomes the central feature of the Christian liturgy, organised
round the Mass which is at once sacrifice and sacrificial meal. (edited)
Comments Off
Commentary on
Matthew 12:1-8
Today’s story follows immediately on yesterday’s words of
Jesus inviting those carrying heavy burdens to come to him for comfort and
relief. Those burdens were understood to be the yoke of the Law which
could weigh so heavily on the ordinary person. Today we see what kind of
burdens it entailed.
Jesus and his disciples are walking through a
cornfield. The disciples were feeling a little hungry so they began
plucking ears of corn to eat…nothing wrong with that. Gleaning,
especially where the poor were concerned, was not regarded as stealing:
If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may
pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your
neighbor’s standing grain. (Deut 23:25)
Yet the Pharisees criticised the disciples’ behaviour before
Jesus. They were not upset by the plucking of the corn, but because it
was done on a Sabbath day. Most manual work was forbidden on the Sabbath,
including for instance, reaping. So we read in Exodus:
Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall
rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest.
(Exod 34:21)
The question that would come immediately to the legalistic
mind would be what exactly constituted harvesting. In the minds of the
Pharisees, who would put the strictest interpretation in order to be on the
safe side, what the disciples were doing contravened the Sabbath requirements.
Jesus would have none of this nonsense. He gave two
examples which the Pharisees would find difficult to criticise. First, David’s
soldiers, because they were hungry, went into the house of God and ate the
”bread of offering”, that is, bread which was laid out as an offering to
God. According to the Law, only the priests were allowed to eat this
bread.
Second, he pointed to the priests on temple duty who not
only worked on the Sabbath, but did more work than usual on that day (like
priests today!). Yet no one found fault with them.
Jesus has two further and more powerful arguments. First, he
calls his accusers’ attention to a saying paraphrased from the prophet Hosea:
I desire mercy and not sacrifice… (Hos 6:6)
What this means is that the measure of our behaviour in
God’s eyes is not our observance of law, but the degree of love and compassion
we have for our brothers and sisters. Laws are for people; people are not
for laws. That is why a truly loving act always transcends any law.
If the Pharisees had fully understood the meaning of Hosea’s words, they would
not have “condemned these innocent men”.
Second, Jesus simply says,
…the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus as Lord is not bound by even the God-given laws of
Israel. If, in the eyes of Jesus, his disciples are innocent, then they
are innocent.
Every time we read texts like this we have to look at how we
as Christians behave both individually and corporately. Legalism and
small-mindedness can very easily infect our Catholic life. We can start
measuring people—including ourselves, but especially others—by the observance
or non-observance of things which really have little to do with the substance
of our Christian faith. Of course, we can also go to the other extreme of
having no rules at all.
There is a very demanding law to which we are all called to
subscribe and that is the law of love. It allows of no exceptions.
But its practice can only benefit both the giver and the receiver.
Comments Off
https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1156g/
Friday,
July 18, 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 12: 1-8
Jesus was going through a
field of grain on the sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the
heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him,
"See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the
sabbath." He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he
and his companions were hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the
bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests
could lawfully eat? Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the
priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath and are innocent? I say to
you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, I
desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned these innocent men.
For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath."
Reflection
In today’s Gospel we see
that there are many conflicts between Jesus and the religious authority of that
time. They are conflicts regarding the religious practices of that time:
fasting, purity, observance of the Sabbath, etc. In our day, they might be
conflicts regarding, for example, matrimony between divorced persons,
friendship with prostitutes, acceptance of homosexuals, communion without being
married by the Church, Sunday mass obligation, fasting on Good Friday. The
conflicts were many: at home, in school, in work, in the community, in the
Church, in personal life, in society. They were conflicts regarding growth, relationship,
age, mentality. So many of them! To live life without conflicts is impossible!
Conflict is part of life and starts at birth. We are born with birth pangs.
Conflicts are not accidents along the way, but form part of the journey, of the
process of conversion. What strikes us is the way in which Jesus faces the
conflicts. In the discussion with His enemies, He was not trying to show them
that He was right, but wished to make the experience which He, Jesus, had of
God, Father and Mother, prevail. The image of God which others had was that of
a severe Judge who only threatened and condemned. Jesus tries to have mercy
prevail, since the objective of the Law is the practice of Love.
•
Matthew 12: 1-2: To
pick grain on the Sabbath day and the criticism of the Pharisees. On a
Sabbath day, the disciples went through the fields and they picked grain to eat
them. They were hungry. The Pharisees arrived and invoke the Bible to say that
the disciples were transgressing the law of the Sabbath (cf. Ex 20:8-11). Jesus
also uses the Bible and responds invoking three examples taken from Scripture:
(1) that of David, (2) that of the legislation on work of the priests in the
temple and (3) from the action of the Prophet Hosea, that is, He quotes a
historical book, a legislative book and a prophetic book.
•
Matthew 12: 3-4: The
example of David. Jesus recalls that David himself did something which was
forbidden by the Law, because he took the sacred bread of the temple and gave
it to the soldiers to eat, because they were hungry (1 Sam 21: 2-7). No
Pharisee had the courage to criticize King David!
•
Matthew 12: 5-6: The
example of the priests. Accused by the religious authority, Jesus argues
beginning from what they themselves, the religious authority, do on the Sabbath
day. On the Sabbath day, in the Temple of Jerusalem, the priests worked very
much more than the other days of the week, because they had to sacrifice the
animals for the sacrifices; they had to clean, sweep, carry burdens, kill the
animals, etc. Yet nobody said that this was against the Law. They thought of it
as normal! The Law itself obliged them to do all this (Num 28: 9-10).
•
Matthew 12: 7: The
example of the prophets. Jesus quotes a verse from the prophet Hosea: I want mercy and not sacrifice. The word
mercy means to have the heart (cor) in the misery (miseri) of others, that is, the merciful person has to be very
close to the suffering of the people, has to identify himself/herself with
them. The word sacrifice means to have (ficio)
a thing consecrated (sacri), that
is, that the one who offers a sacrifice separates the sacrificed object from
profane use and places it at a distance from the daily life of the people. If
the Pharisees had had this way of looking at the life of the prophet Hosea,
they would have known that the most pleasing sacrifice for God is not that the
consecrated persons lives far away from reality, but that he/she places his/her
consecrated heart totally in the service of the brothers and sisters in order
to relieve them from their misery. They would not have considered guilty those
who in reality were innocent.
Matthew 12: 8: The Son of Man is the master of the Sabbath.
Jesus ends with this statement: The Son
of Man is the master of the Sabbath! Jesus Himself is the criterion for
interpretation of the Law of God. Jesus knows the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible) by heart and invokes it to indicate that
the arguments of the others had no foundation. At that time, there were no
printed bibles as we have today. In every community there was only one copy
written by hand, which remained in the synagogue. If Jesus knew the bible so
well, it means that during the thirty years of His life in Nazareth, He had
participated intensely in the life of the community, where Scripture was read
every Saturday. The new experience of God the Father made Jesus discover God’s
intention in decreeing the laws of the Old Testament. Having lived thirty years
in Nazareth and feeling as His own the oppression and exclusion of so many
brothers and sisters, in the name of the law, Jesus must have perceived that
this could not be the meaning of the law. If God is Father, then He accepts all
as sons and daughters. If God is Father, then we should be brothers and sisters
among ourselves. Jesus lived this and prayed for this, from the beginning until
the end. The law should be at the service of life and of fraternity. “The human
being is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for the human being” (Mk 2:
27). Because of His great fidelity to this message, Jesus was condemned to death.
He disturbed the system, and the system defended itself, using its force
against Jesus, because He wished that the Law be placed at the service of life,
and not vice-versa. We need to know the bible in depth and to participate
deeply in the community, as Jesus did.
Personal Questions
•
What type of conflicts do you find in the family, in
society, in the Church? What are the conflicts which concern religious
practices which cause suffering to people nowadays and which are a cause of
discussion and polemics? What is the image of God behind all these
preconceptions, behind all these norms and prohibitions?
•
What has conflict taught you during all these years?
What is the message which you draw from all this for our communities today?
For Further Study
To know the bible in depth
can be difficult. Various passages may seem to contradict each other, unless
put into a broader context where all of a particular reference can be put
together in one place. This is one way people use bible quotations to distort their
real meaning. The Vatican has tools online to help. The bible is online in
searchable form in an approved version at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/_INDEX.HTM
along with a concordance
which lists and links every word in the bible in an index at
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/_FA.HTM
and allows a user to collect
similar words and ideas in one place to help discern their real meaning. Look
at these online and see if they can help you learn the bible to a greater depth
and understanding.
Concluding Prayer
Lord, I muse on You in the
watches of the night, for You have always been my help;
in the
shadow of Your wings I rejoice; my heart clings to You, Your right hand
supports me. (Ps 63: 6-8)
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét