November 3, 2025
Monday of the Thirty-first
Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 485
Reading
1
Brothers and
sisters:
The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.
Just as you once disobeyed God
but have now received mercy
because of their disobedience,
so they have now disobeyed in order that,
by virtue of the mercy shown to you,
they too may now receive mercy.
For God delivered all to disobedience,
that he might have mercy upon all.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord
or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given him anything
that he may be repaid?
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To God be glory forever. Amen.
Responsorial
Psalm
R. (14c) Lord,
in your great love, answer me.
But I am afflicted and in pain;
let your saving help, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.
"See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not."
R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.
For God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
They shall dwell in the land and own it,
and the descendants of his servants shall inherit it,
and those who love his name shall inhabit it.
R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples,
and you will know the truth, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
On a sabbath Jesus
went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.
He said to the host who invited him,
"When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110325.cfm
Commentary on Romans
11:29-36
Paul continues to reflect on the strange ways by which the
rejection of Jesus by the Jews has brought God’s mercy to the once disobedient
Gentiles. Once again, he emphasises that by turning to the Gentiles, God has
not changed his mind about the giving of his gifts or the choices he has made
in the past. His love for the Jews has not changed one bit. The problem is in
the way they are responding to him by their rejection of Jesus Christ as his
Son.
In the past the Gentiles, too, were disobedient to God, but
now, through the rejection of the Jews, God’s mercy and compassion has been
shown to them. In the same way, says Paul, those Jews who are disobedient
now will receive mercy through the same mercy which has been shown to the
Gentiles:
For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may
be merciful to all.
Disobedience is not peculiar to any particular group, be
they Jews or Gentiles. There has been a period of disobedience for each in
order that God may show mercy to them all. God’s door is open to every
single person; it is for each one to make the decision to enter. That
choice is up to each person to open themselves to God’s loving compassion.
Paul now ends the chapter and this section of the Letter
with a profound doxology on God’s inscrutable wisdom:
O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of
God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
This doxology is a natural outpouring of Paul’s praise to
God, whose wisdom and knowledge brought about his great plan for the salvation
of both Jews and Gentiles. As Paul has indicated throughout these
chapters, both Jew and Gentile, despite the religious stubbornness of each,
have received the gift of faith. Thus the divine plan or ‘mystery’ of
salvation has become open and comprehensible to the whole human race.
He paraphrases from the great Psalm 139 on the all-knowing
and ever-present God:
For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?
How and whom God calls is an impenetrable mystery, and why
some respond and others do not is equally beyond our understanding. There
is nothing we can ever give to God which has not first been given to us by him.
We can only echo the concluding words of Paul:
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.
Blessed are those who come to understand this and make it
the basis of all their living.
So often we try to reduce God down to our human level.
And when we do, we find ourselves getting into difficult situations, especially
when we try to explain how and why things happen. We must never forget
God’s two great attributes: his transcendence and his immanence.
Through his transcendence, God surpasses all we can possibly
conceive about him. As St Thomas Aquinas tells us, as soon as we make an
affirmation about God, it has to be denied. For whatever truth may be in
it, it is totally short of the full truth. For instance, we say “God is
love”. Yes, up to a point, but at the same time God’s love is something
totally other than love in the limited way we can ever experience it on this
earth.
We experience God’s immanence in a similar way. God is
totally present to everything he has made. Closer to me than breathing, as St
Augustine put it. God is both so close and yet so far. So in our
trying to understand the situation of the Gentiles and the Jews, we can only
accept with humility the call we have received to follow Jesus. This is
similar to many other situations in life which we find difficult to understand.
While it is important that we always try to go as far as we
can in our understanding, we also have to recognise that in probing God’s ways
we will always be severely limited.
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Commentary on Luke
14:12-14
After giving the scribes and Pharisees advice on how (not)
to choose a place at a banquet, Jesus goes on to teach his host what to do when
he holds a dinner. He should not invite family members, relatives, friends and
the influential rich from whom he can expect to get similar invitations in
return.
Rather he should go out of his way to:
…invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the
blind…you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid
at the resurrection of the righteous.
This will be a proof of the genuineness of his generosity.
Sharing meals with friends is a lovely thing, but Jesus is making the point
that our mutual entertainment should not be at the expense of those who do not
have enough to eat. It will be a real act of love, and not be a form of
self-seeking and self-aggrandisement or mutual back scratching in a
never-ending entertainment circus.
It reminds us of what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount
about loving those who love us:
Do not even the gentiles do the same? (Matt
5:47)
There is no real virtue in this. In fact, it can be a way of
using people to our own advantage. It also reminds us of the parable of the
rich man and Lazarus. In such circumstances, uncaring self-indulgence can in no
way be justified.
We might remark here, of course, that there is no such thing
as pure altruism, that is, an action that is done purely for others with
absolutely nothing for self. Everything we do, we do ultimately for ourselves.
We have no choice but to seek our own good—to act otherwise would be quite
silly and even wrong. It all depends on how and why we do it.
A person can seek self by using, manipulating, and
exploiting others for one’s own gain. But a person can use all their energies
for the good of others, and in doing so, there is a feeling of satisfaction in
doing the right thing. Even one’s life can be sacrificed as the only way of
satisfying self. For instance, a mother may not hesitate to sacrifice her life
to save a child in danger. Not to do so would lead to a situation she might
find difficult to live with for the rest of her life.
We do have to seek our own interests. We can do that at the
expense of others, or we can realise that it is by sharing what we have with
others in need that we become enriched in a very special way.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1312g
Monday,
November 3, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening prayer
God of power and
mercy, only with Your help can we offer You fitting service and praise. May we
live the faith we profess and trust Your promise of eternal life.
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 14:12-14
Jesus said to His host, "When you give a lunch
or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relations or
rich neighbors, in case they invite you back and so repay you. No, when you
have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and then you
will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you and so you will be repaid
when the upright rise again."
Reflection
•
The Gospel today continues to present the
teaching Jesus was giving on different themes, all related to curing in the
setting of a banquet: a cure during a meal (Lk 14: 1- 6), advice not to take
the places of honor (Lk 14:7-12), and advice to invite the excluded (Lk
14:12-14). This organization of Jesus’ words around a particular word, for
example, table or banquet, helps one to understand the method used by the first
Christians to keep the words of Jesus in their memory.
•
Luke 14:12: Interested invitation. Jesus is
eating in the house of a Pharisee who has invited Him (Lk 14:1). The invitation
to share at table is the theme of the teaching of today’s Gospel. There are
different types of invitations: the interested invitations for the benefit of
oneself and disinterested invitations for the benefit of others. Jesus says,
"When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your
brothers or your relations or rich neighbors, in case they invite you back and
so repay you”. That was the normal custom of the people: to invite friends,
brothers and relatives to eat. Nobody would sit at table with unknown people.
They would sit around the table only with people who were their friends. That
was the custom of the Jews. Even now we also act in the same way. Jesus thinks
differently and orders us to invite unknown people.
These were invitations which nobody
made.
•
Luke 14:13-14: Disinterested invitation. Jesus
says “On the contrary, when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled,
the lame, the blind; then you will be blessed, for they have no means to repay
you. So you will be repaid when the upright rise again.” Jesus orders them and
us to break the closed circle and asks us to invite the excluded, the poor, the
crippled, the lame, and the blind. This was not the custom then and it is not
today either. But Jesus insists, “Invite these people”. Why? Because in the
disinterested invitation, addressed to excluded and marginalized persons, there
is a source of happiness: “And then you will be blessed for they have no means
to repay you”. This is a strange type of happiness, a different happiness! You
will be blessed for they have no means to repay you. It is the happiness that
comes from doing a totally gratuitous gesture, without asking for anything.
Jesus says that this is the happiness which God will give us in the
Resurrection; the happiness of the Resurrection which He will give us not only
at the end of history, but even now. To act in this way is to catch a glimpse
of the happiness in the Resurrection!
•
It is the Kingdom which will be confirmed. The
advice which Jesus gives us in the Gospel today recalls the sending out of the
seventy-two on the mission to announce the Kingdom (Lk 10:1-9). Among the
different recommendations given on that occasion, as signs of the presence of
the Kingdom, there is: (a) the invitation to the table and (b) the acceptance
of the excluded: “Whenever you go into a town, where they make you welcome, eat
what is put before you, cure those who are sick and say, the Kingdom of God is
very near to you!” (Lk 10:8-9) Here, in these recommendations, Jesus orders the
transgression of that norm of legal purity which prevented fraternal living
together.
Personal questions
•
An interested or disinterested invitation: which
of these takes place in my life?
•
If you invited people in a disinterested way,
would this cause some difficulties?
Which ones?
Concluding prayer
Yahweh, my heart is not haughty, I do not set my sights too
high.
I have taken no part in great affairs, in wonders beyond my
scope.
No, I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a
little child in its mother's arms, like a little child, so I keep myself. (Ps
131:l-2)
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