October 14, 2025
Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth
Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 468
Reading
1
Brothers and
sisters:
I am not ashamed of the Gospel.
It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes:
for Jew first, and then Greek.
For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith;
as it is written, "The one who is righteous by faith will live."
The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven
against every impiety and wickedness
of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
For what can be known about God is evident to them,
because God made it evident to them.
Ever since the creation of the world,
his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity
have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.
As a result, they have no excuse;
for although they knew God
they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks.
Instead, they became vain in their reasoning,
and their senseless minds were darkened.
While claiming to be wise, they became fools
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
for the likeness of an image of mortal man
or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.
Therefore, God handed them over to impurity
through the lusts of their hearts
for the mutual degradation of their bodies.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie
and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator,
who is blessed forever. Amen.
Responsorial
Psalm
R. (2a) The
heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day pours out the word to day,
and night to night imparts knowledge.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Not a word nor a discourse
whose voice is not heard;
Through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
The word of God is living and effective,
able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
After Jesus had
spoken,
a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home.
He entered and reclined at table to eat.
The Pharisee was amazed to see
that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.
The Lord said to him, "Oh you Pharisees!
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish,
inside you are filled with plunder and evil.
You fools!
Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?
But as to what is within, give alms,
and behold, everything will be clean for you."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101425.cfm
Commentary on Romans 1:16-25
In today’s
reading, Paul begins:
…I am not
ashamed of the gospel…
Paul says
this because his is a message that meets with a lot of opposition and ridicule.
But he continues:
…it is
God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for
the Greek….The one who is righteous will live by faith.
This also
expresses the theme of the whole Letter. In speaking of shame, perhaps he is
thinking of his coming journey to Rome, the capital of a whole empire, with all
its pagan sophistication. There were many other places where his message
was ridiculed, such as Athens and Ephesus, to give just two examples. Right at
the beginning he uses the word “faith”, the understanding of which is at the
centre of his whole message.
The
characteristics of Christian faith, as presented in the New Testament, may be
listed as follows:
- A response of the human being
to God as Truth and Goodness;
- The one source of salvation.
Faith
requires belief in the Son and the kerygma or proclamation
made by the Apostles, which says that God raised Jesus from the dead, made
him Kyrios (Lord) and through him offers life to all who
believe in him.
Faith is a
necessary condition for salvation. It is not only intellectual assent, but
includes trusting and obeying the life-giving Truth. It is a reliance on God
and not on self. As such, it is in contrast with the old order of the Law and
its vain search for holiness by works.
Only faith
can bring about true holiness. In so far as faith is related to the promise
made to Abraham, it makes salvation accessible to all, pagans included. When
coupled with baptism, faith calls for public profession, and expresses itself
in love (agape). Faith is supported by hope and must be allowed to grow
amid struggles and sufferings, demanding fortitude and tenacity right up to the
vision and possession of God.
Because
Paul sees the gospel as “God’s eternal power”, it brings salvation, wholeness
and life to all who accept it, Jews and Gentiles alike. This is something
he has personally experienced.
The gospel
reveals the ‘justice’ of God, his inner truth and goodness and harmony which we
are invited to share. The key to reaching it is faith: the acceptance of
the truth of the message and a total commitment in trust to basing our lives on
the message and its Messenger.
Salvation
comes to “the Jew first”. In the actual development of salvation history
the Jews come first. In John’s Gospel Jesus tells the Samaritan woman
that:
…salvation
is from the Jews… (John
4:22)
Jesus, the
Messiah, was himself a Jew. Paul said that:
…the
Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. (Rom 3:2)
The
covenants, Law, Temple worship, revelation of the divine glory, and the
Messianic prophecies came first to the Jews. These privileges, however,
were not extended to the Jews because of their superior merit or because of
God’s partiality towards them. It was necessary that the invasion of this
world by the gospel begin at a particular point with a particular people, who
in turn were responsible to carry that gospel to the other nations. And Paul is
not ashamed of the gospel:
For in
it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is
written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
“Righteousness”
here is not the justice of giving someone what belongs to them, but speaks
rather of the inner goodness of God, who extends his promise of salvation to
all as a free gift. But the experience of this justice requires a faith
and trust in God as Lord of one’s life.
Paul now
moves on to consider the fate of those unbelievers who totally reject God:
For the
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of
those who by their injustice suppress the truth.
In
developing the theme of righteousness and justice from God, Paul sets the stage
by showing that all have sinned and therefore need the righteousness that only
God can provide. He shows the sin of the Gentiles and the sin of the Jews
and then summarises the sin of all—Gentile and Jew alike. He begins by saying
that no one—not even one who has never heard of the Scripture or of Christ—has
an excuse for not honouring God, because the whole created world reveals
him.
The “wrath
of God” is not a petulant, irrational burst, such as humans often exhibit, but
a holy, just revulsion against what is contrary to and opposes his holy nature
and will. This ‘wrath’ is being revealed now in the wicked becoming the
victims of their own evil acts. By their behaviour they “suppress the
truth”. That is, they block the truth about God which is so clearly
evident in our created world:
For
what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to
them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine
nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the
things God has made.
Reason
alone, by observing the beauty of creation all around, can easily bring us to
an awareness of the Source of all these things.
As the
Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom we have cited numerous times before,
said:
“The world
is charged with the grandeur of God.”
This
sentiment has been repeated by poets and artists all down the centuries and in
every culture. Hence, as Paul says:
…they
are without excuse, for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or
give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless
hearts were darkened.
An
awareness of a Creator being responsible for such Truth, Goodness and Beauty
naturally leads to forms of praise and thanks and worship. We give thanks for
many earthly blessings such as sun, rain and crops and we offer prayers of
petition when these things are lacking.
Again,
this is a phenomenon found in some form in every human culture. Instead:
Claiming
to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God
for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or
reptiles.
The glory
of God in nature was replaced by the making of all kinds of images—the likeness
of humans, birds, animals, reptiles and other living or non-living things. Even
the sophisticated Greeks and Romans, with all their enlightened philosophies,
indulged in such idolatries and superstitions.
The result
of such behaviour was that:
God
gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring
of their bodies among themselves.
The pagan
temples all over the Near East and the Mediterranean were notorious for the
sexual indulgences and perversions which were widely practiced. In Paul’s
letters we read how even Christians were tempted and often fell. The
traditional biblical phrase “God abandoned”, or “left them”, used three times
for emphasis, means that religious error, if blameworthy, results in moral and
social ills. Sin produces its own consequences and its own
punishment.
Though
Paul judges and condemns pagan society, he does not condemn individuals (whose
intentions God alone must judge) since he presupposes that there are pagans who
obey the natural law written in their hearts. What so many of the Gentiles did
was to exchange God’s truth for a lie, because they worshipped and served a
creature instead of the Creator.
We have
been blessed with the revelation of God which has come to us through the
Scriptures and especially through Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and his
Church. Even so, we too can profit by seeking and finding God’s active
presence in the world in which we live and spend our days.
We live,
as the Jesuit writer Teilhard de Chardin wrote, in a “divine milieu”, an
environment where every single thing we come in contact with is touched by
God. And there is the beautiful phrase from the Jesuit Jean Pierre de
Caussade, describing our celebrating: “The sacrament of the present
moment”—where every single moment of every day is a sign of God’s presence and
love. We are never alone.
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Commentary on Luke 11:37-41
Jesus
continues to highlight what is central to our relationship with God. We skip
over a short passage which is about various aspects of light. In short, the
Christian is to be a person full of light through and through—not like the kind
of people Jesus now goes on to describe.
He had
been invited to dinner by a Pharisee. Jesus apparently went straight into the
dining area and reclined at the table prepared to eat. The Pharisee was quite
shocked because Jesus had not first washed his hands before eating. Of course,
we are strongly recommended to wash our hands before sitting down to eat. But
here we are not dealing with a question of hygiene, but of ritual washing.
Jesus had omitted to perform a religious ritual which was laid down by the
stricter Jews, although not actually part of the Law. The rule probably had
originally a hygienic purpose. By giving it a religious sanction, one made sure
that it was carried out. Many other obligations, some of them contained in the
Mosaic Law like those from Leviticus, seem to be of the same kind.
Most
probably, Jesus, in the ordinary course of events, would have had no problem
about performing this ritual, but it is likely that here he is deliberately
making a point. It allows him to draw attention to what he sees as false
religion. A person’s virtue is not to be judged by his performance or
non-performance of an external rite.
As Jesus
tells this man in a graphic image, the Pharisees concentrate on making sure
that the outside of the cup is clean while inside it is full of all kinds of
depravity and corruption (like the judgmental thoughts in this man’s mind and
the sinister plotting that the Pharisees in general were directing against
Jesus). God is as much, if not much more, concerned about the inside as the
outside.
Instead,
Jesus says:
So give
as alms those things that are within and then everything will be clean for you.
When the
inside is clean, there is no need to worry about the outside. Giving alms is a
positive act of kindness to another person, an act of love and compassion. It
neutralises the greed and rapacity of which he accuses them. It is not, like
the washing of hands, a purely empty ritual which says little and is almost
totally self-directed.
It is so
easy to judge people, including our fellow-Catholics, by their observance or
non-observance of certain Christian customs, which of themselves are of a
non-moral nature. In the past, for instance, we might have criticised a woman
for not wearing a hat in church, or a priest for appearing without his Roman
collar. Today, some might be scandalised because a person goes to communion
having had a huge meal well within the designated one hour of fasting, or for
some still, eating meat on Friday, even though the ‘law’ does not require it.
We need to recognize that most of the passages in the Gospel attacking the
Pharisees are really directed against ‘pharisees’ in our Christian communities,
not to mention the pharisee in our own hearts.
Elsewhere,
Jesus has told us not to judge because it is very difficult for us to know what
is going on within another person’s mind. What Jesus is really emphasising here
is the inner spirit and motivation. Once that is right, everything else will be
taken care of.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1283g/
Tuesday,
October 14, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Lord, our help and guide, make
your love the foundation of our lives.
May our love for you express itself in our eagerness
to do good for others. You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 11: 37-41
Jesus had just finished speaking when a Pharisee invited him
to dine at his house. He went in and sat down at table. The Pharisee saw this
and was surprised that he had not first washed before the meal. But the Lord
said to him, 'You Pharisees! You clean the outside of cup and plate, while
inside yourselves you are filled with extortion and wickedness. Fools! Did not
he who made the outside make the inside too? Instead, give alms from what you
have and, look, everything will be clean for you.
Reflection
In today’s Gospel there is the
continuation of the tense relationship between Jesus and the religious
authority of his time. But in spite of the tension there was a certain
familiarity between Jesus and the Pharisees. Invited to eat at their house,
Jesus accepts the invitation. He does not lose his freedom before them; neither
do the Pharisees before him.
•
Luke 11: 37-38: The admiration of the Pharisees
before the liberty of Jesus. “At that time after Jesus had finished speaking, a
Pharisee invited him to dine at his house. He went in and sat down at table.
The Pharisee saw this and was surprised that he had not first washed before the
meal.” Jesus accepts the invitation to eat at the house of the Pharisee, but he
does not change his way of acting, sitting at table without washing his hands.
Neither does the Pharisee change his attitude before Jesus, because he
expresses his admiration for the fact that Jesus did not wash his hands. At
that time, to wash the hands before eating was a religious obligation, imposed
upon people in the name of purity, ordered by the law of God. The Pharisee was
surprised by the fact that Jesus does not observe this religious norm. But in
spite of their total difference, the Pharisee and Jesus have something in
common: for them life is serious. The way of doing of the Pharisee was the following:
every day, they dedicated eight hours to study and to the meditation of the law
of God, another eight hours to work in order to be able to survive with the
family and the other eight hours to rest. This serious witness of their life
gives them a great popular leadership. Perhaps because of this, in spite of the
fact of being totally diverse, both, Jesus and the Pharisees, understood and
criticized one another, without losing the possibility to dialogue.
•
Luke 11: 39-41: The response of Jesus. “You Pharisees
you clean the outside of the cup and plate, while inside yourselves you are
filled with extortion and wickedness. Fools! Did not he who made the outside
make the inside too? Instead, give alms from what you have and, look,
everything will be clean for you.” The Pharisees observed the law literally.
They only looked at the letter and because of this they were incapable to
perceive the spirit of the law, the objective that the observance of the law
wanted to attain in the life of the persons. For example, in the law it was
written: “Love the neighbor as yourself” (Lv 19: 18). And they commented: “We
should love the neighbor, yes, but only the neighbor, not the others!” And from
there arose the discussion around the question: “Who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10:
29) Paul the Apostle writes in his second Letter to the Corinthians: “The
letter kills, the spirit gives life” (2Co 3: 6). In the Sermon on the Mountain,
Jesus criticizes those who observe the letter of the law put transgress the
spirit (Mt 5: 20). In order to be faithful to what God asks us it is not
sufficient to observe the letter of the law. It would be the same thing as to
clean the cup on the outside and to leave the inside all dirty: robbery and
injustice so on. It is not sufficient not to kill, not to rob, not to commit
adultery, not to swear. Only observe fully the law of God, of he who, beyond
the letter, goes to the roots and pulls out from within the desires of “robbery
and injustice” which can lead to murder, robbery, adultery, It is in the
practice of love that the fullness of the law is attained (cf. Mt 5: 21-48).
Personal Questions
•
Does our Church today merit the accusation which
Jesus addressed against the Scribes and the Pharisees? Do I deserve it?
•
To respect the seriousness of life of others who
think in a different way from us, can facilitate today dialogue which is so
necessary and difficult. How do I practice dialogue in the family, in work and
in the community?
Concluding Prayer
Let your faithful love come to me, Yahweh, true to your
promise, save me!
Give me an answer to the taunts against me, since I rely on
your word. (Ps 119: 4142)
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