A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy

 

 

BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 6, n. 40)

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – August 31, 2008

 

“Prophet of Truth”

 

BIBLE READINGS

Jer 20:7-9   // Rom 12:1-2 // Mt 16:21-27

 

 

(N.B. Series 6 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year A from the perspective of the First Reading. For another set of reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year A, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US and open Series 3.)

 

 

 

 

I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS

 

This Sunday’s Old Testament reading (Jer 20:7-9) is laden with pathos and deep emotion. Jeremiah expresses his deep frustration, with a pain bordering on despair, that his vocation to truth had caused him a lot of ridicule and scorn. He felt that God had “seduced” him into accepting a mission that brought him nothing but derision and suffering. Jeremiah had just had a serious confrontation with the idolatrous temple priest Pashur, who ordered the prophet flogged and locked in the stocks overnight for pronouncing unwelcome and distressing prophecies against Jerusalem and the people of Judah. The long-suffering and violently persecuted Jeremiah, having reached the limits of endurance, resolved: “I will not mention him. I will speak in his name no more” (Jer 20:9a). After the spate of revulsion and lament, however, Jeremiah made a “confession” about the irresistible power of God’s Word: “But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones. I grow weary holding it in; I cannot endure it” (Jer 20:9b).

 

The authors of the Days of the Lord, vol. 4, comment: “Jeremiah is a striking example of the irresistible force of God’s call, the seduction from which a person does not succeed in escaping. Nothing prepared Jeremiah for the mission he received. Extremely sensitive, timid, deeply attached to his fatherland and kin, he becomes a prophet of doom, obliged to antagonize the powerful and foretell ruin to those he loves … The whole initiative was from God who chose him before his birth … Jeremiah allowed himself to be seduced. God’s word is a devouring fire. Jeremiah is painfully experiencing that it is impossible from now on for him to evade his mission, whatever persecution he undergoes. And this is how weak and frail persons become capable, under the Spirit’s impulse, to speak on God’s part (2 Pet 1:21). No one can understand this without having experienced, at the very center of the torment, the invincible attraction exerted by God.”

 

Jeremiah’s submissive stance to faithfully serve the Word of God, notwithstanding persecution and difficulties, makes him a model of total surrender to the divine saving plan. He is a figure of the incarnate Word of truth, Jesus Christ, the ultimate prophet, who committed himself wholeheartedly to fulfill God the Father’s saving plan by undergoing the paschal mystery of his passion, death and resurrection to glory. In the lives of Jeremiah and Jesus and in their prophetic ministry, we see that conflicts and suffering are intimately woven into the warp and woof of the history of salvation. The Christians of today are called to serve, through suffering and difficulties, the all-powerful Word of God, the font of judgment and salvation. In their service to the prophetic Word, which is “like a fire burning in their hearts”, they must deny themselves and surrender their lives to God as limpid witnesses of truth.

 

The liturgical scholar Adrian Nocent asserts: “An authentic Christian prophet does not seek to flatter the desires of worldly men, but dares to proclaim the truth and the message as it really is … The Christian is sometimes forced to speak, for there are silences that amount to surrender and compromise. In these circumstances a Christian should, like Jeremiah and despite his fear of consequences, feel himself unable to resist the urging of the Spirit given him at baptism … Without fanfare or ostentation, this servant lives a life that is strongly and solidly grounded in truth and wholly given over to God, through renunciation of personal views, for the sake of establishing God’s kingdom.”

 

The following article by Paul Thigpen illustrates the prophetic ministry of Pope Paul VI and how the Christians of today are called to witness to God’s truth about the sanctity of life and “not to conform themselves to this age” (Rom 12:2a) (cf. “Paul VI, Pope and Prophet” in THE CATHOLIC ANSWER, July-August 2006, p. 4).

 

I read an article yesterday in the Washington Post by a woman planning to have a third child. She noted, with some perplexity, a certain reaction she has encountered to her pregnancy. Some people complain – in all seriousness – that she and others like her are just “showing off”, ostentatiously advertising their financial security. Only well-off families, they insist, can afford three children.

 

Well, just tell that to my parents. Mom and Dad barely eked out a living in our little family-owned business, a meat market where we kids grew up working alongside them to bring home the bacon. All five kids, that is. My folks would have been mystified by the notion that we five little ones were somehow a luxury they were presumptuous to take on. I was the third child, and I certainly never felt like a luxury.

 

Yet I don’t think Pope Paul VI, who became pontiff the year my baby sister was born (1963), would have been mystified at all this disturbing attitude. Why not? Because he described the context for its development in his encyclical letter HUMANAE VITAE, whose 40th anniversary the Church commemorates on July 25. In this profound but controversial document on the transmission of human life, the Pope laid out the reasons why artificial contraception is gravely immoral. In it, he noted that the desire to contracept is only one of many modern attempts to extend our control over every aspect of life, including those aspects that represent a mystery not of our own making, much less of our own understanding.

 

In short, it’s an endeavor to play God, and a dangerous one indeed. When much of a society comes to believe – as ours has – that the miracle of life’s transmission is simply one more mechanical function to manipulate at will, then the “product of conception”, as they are now termed (we once called them “children”) are viewed as nothing more than a commodity. So we feel to abort them. We buy and sell them. We use them as lab rats. We figure their costs to see whether we can work them into our financial plan – just one more budget item to be added or subtracted, according to how many other luxury items we might rank ahead of them.

 

Pope Paul VI courageously declared that children are gifts from God to be gratefully received, not assets to be calculated or liabilities disposed of. Forty years later, we must acknowledge his prophetic insight – and mourn a world that has largely rejected his warning.

 

 

 

II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART

 

  1. How does the prophet Jeremiah’s experience of pain and despair impact you? Why did he complain that God seduced or duped him? What was the final stance of Jeremiah to the word of the Lord that brought him mockery and derision, but is “like a fire burning in his heart”? Do we look to Jeremiah as a model of submissive stance to God’s prophetic word?

 

  1. Why is Jesus Christ the ultimate prophet of truth? What is the relationship between his being the word of truth and the paschal mystery of his passion, death and rising to life? Are we ready to follow Jesus, the incarnate word of truth, and to renounce ourselves and follow him all the way to his paschal destiny?

 

  1. In this Year of St. Paul, are we ready to imitate Jesus and Jeremiah in our mission as prophets of truth? In accordance with St. Paul’s exhortation, are we resolved to offer our bodies as a “living sacrifice” and not to conform ourselves to the false logic of this age?

 

 

III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD

Leader: O loving Father,

we thank you for the intriguing figure

of the prophet of truth, Jeremiah.

In carrying out his mission to the people of Judah,

he experienced derision, mockery and violent persecution.

He reached the limits of endurance

and complained to you about being duped.

He wanted to run away

and refused momentarily to speak the message of truth.

But after a fit of lament and despair,

he acknowledged the irresistible power of your life-giving Word

        like a “fire burning in his heart”.

Your life-giving Word could not be contained or ignored.

By his humble, submissive stance to your grandiose saving plan

and by his faithfulness to your word,

Jeremiah is a model of a true prophet.

He prefigures our beloved incarnate word of truth – Jesus Christ.

Let the faithfulness and courage of the prophet Jeremiah

inspire us in our vocation to truth.

Above all, help us to be conformed to Jesus,

the ultimate prophet of truth,

in his total surrender to your saving plan

and in proclaiming your message of judgment and salvation.

Give us the grace to suffer

and the courage to be prophets of truth

in today’s unbelieving world.

Grant this through Christ our Lord.

Assembly: Amen.

 

 

 

IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD

 

The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.

 

“The word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day … But then it becomes like a fire burning in my heart.” (Jer 20:8-9)

 

 

V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION

 

  1. ACTION PLAN: Pray that the Christians of today may have the grace and strength to proclaim God’s saving word of truth. By your courageous stance to promote the culture of life and the Church teachings on peace and justice, let the courage of Jeremiah and the sacrificial offering of Jesus Christ be felt by the people of today.

 

  1. ACTION PLAN: That we may appreciate the perfect offering of Jesus the incarnate Truth and of the various prophets of truth throughout salvation history, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year A, # 40).

 

 

Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang  PDDM

 

 

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