A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 5, n. 42)
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C – September 16, 2007
“Rejoice! The Lost Has Been Found!”
BIBLE READINGS
Ex 32:7-11, 13-14 // I Tm 1:12-17 // Lk 15:1-32
N.B. Series 5 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 C from the perspective of the First Reading. For another set of reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year C, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US and open Series 2.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
Some years ago I attended the Asian Congress on Evangelization in Manila, Philippines. In one of the workshops I joined, a nice-looking lady requested to give a testimony to the group. We were about 800 participants in that workshop on Christ’s Paschal Mystery. The Jesuit facilitator gave her the floor. In a calm and deliberate voice, she narrated how her brother molested her when she was small. She was repeatedly violated and it stopped only when she was old and strong enough to resist. She grew up with a violent temperament and dysfunctional behavior. It was very easy for her to wield a knife when she was angry and to defend herself with it. She eventually got married and had children, but there was something sad and tragic in the way she lived. One day her daughter gravely asked her, “Mom, when are you going to forgive your brother?” That shook her. She wept and realized there and then what she needed to do. She picked up the phone and called her brother. Addressing him as “Kuya” – the Filipino term of respect for an elder brother – she asked him, “Remember what you did to me?” She paused and then continued, “I forgive you!” The brother burst into tears and sobbed bitterly, “Ang sakit! Ang sakit!” (meaning, “It hurts! It hurts!”). Filled with remorse, guilt and pain through the years for the violence inflicted on his sister, he humbly received the gift of peace and forgiveness she offered. The repentant brother then informed her that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. When the phone rang, he was just about to step out of the door for an appointment with his physician. The brother died peacefully a few months later surrounded by his family – including the victimized sister who had forgiven all his offenses. That forgiving lady became a channel of God’s peace and reconciliation. Her brother’s death was a peaceful and joyful homecoming to the Lord. The participants in the workshop were deeply touched by her story of forgiveness and experienced the beautiful message contained in Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep: “Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep … There will be great joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” (Lk 15:6-7).
The readings of this Sunday’s liturgy speak of God’s loving and diligent search for sinners and his compassionate stance in dealing with them. God’s most basic stance is forgiveness. The Old Testament passage from the Book of Exodus (32:7-11, 13-14) extols the merciful forgiveness of God. It also underlines the importance of Moses’ ministry of intercession on behalf of fickle Israel, the erring and idolatrous people. Harold Buetow comments: “Humankind’s deepest need and highest achievement is forgiveness. Today’s excerpt from the second book of the Bible, Exodus, speaks of one incident of a provoked God forgiving His people. Throughout the Exodus from Egypt, God’s people griped and whined … Now, while Moses was on Mt. Sinai, they complained that Moses had abandoned them, so they molded the golden calf-idol. God announced that he would destroy the people for this, and so Moses appealed to Him to forgive. Because of God’s loving-kindness (hesed) for His people, He forgives. Of course, God does not get angry or change his mind or repent. But in our efforts to understand God, we have to use human language, as did the writers of the First Testament. So what began as a story of people’s sinfulness really became a story of God’s forgiveness. God’s forgiveness on Mt. Sinai foreshadowed what Jesus would do and teach.”
The three parables of “the lost and the found” contained in this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Lk 15:1-32) delineate that God’s love surpasses our sinful misery and is deeper than our heroic attempts to love and to forgive. Through the parable of the lost sheep (v. 4-7), the parable of the lost coin (v. 8-10), and the parable of the prodigal son (v. 11-32), Jesus invites us to rejoice at the homecoming of the lost and celebrate his reconciliation with God. The parables help us to relish the ultimate Good News – the amazing mercy of God and the grace of his forgiveness, incarnated in the person of his Son Jesus Christ and brought to completion by his passion and life-giving death on the cross. The heart-warming stories dramatize the forgiving love of God – his determined quest in Jesus Christ to find the sinner and his abounding delight in bringing the sinner back home to a place of eternal feasting and joy.
Harold Buetow concludes: “Nothing speaks of the radical nature of Jesus’ message more than his teachings on forgiveness. Forgiveness is the final form of love, and wholehearted forgiveness is so loving, that it is God like … And we are to imitate God’s kind of love in joyful forgiving of other people … To pray for the grace to forgive, even when we do not feel like forgiving. The very fact that we sincerely want to forgive means we have actually forgiven the person in our heart. Good feelings will follow, though not necessarily right away … Remembering that forgiveness is humankind’s deepest need and highest achievement, let us look into the concealed places where lost people tend to hide, and contribute to the healing forgiveness that we and our world so greatly crave.”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
A. How did the people Israel negate their love relationship with God who led them out of the slavery in Egypt? What did Moses do to promote healing and the restoration of the people’s covenantal relationship with God? What does the story of the people of Israel and the forgiveness extended to them by God, through the mediation of Moses, teach us?
B. How do the three parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son impact us? What do these parables tell us about the basic stance of God in relation to those who have alienated themselves from him and have negated his paternal love? Why is the conversion of a sinner a cause for rejoicing? Are we willing to celebrate with God the grace of reconciliation, or are we rather indifferent to it?
C. Do we thank the Lord God for his gift of forgiveness incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ, who fully identified himself with sinners by his passion and life-giving death on the cross? Do we try to imitate God in his basic stance of forgiving love? Do we try to imitate Jesus in his ministry of seeking the lost? Are we capable of joining in the feast of the Kingdom and in celebrating the return of a sinner to the bosom of God?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Almighty and merciful God, how wonderfully you created man and still more wonderfully remade him. You do not abandon the sinner but seek him out with a father’s love. You sent your Son into the world to destroy sin and death by his passion, and to restore life and joy by his resurrection. You sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts to make us your children and heirs of your kingdom. You constantly renew our spirit in the sacraments of your redeeming love, freeing us from the slavery to sin and transforming us ever more closely into the likeness of your beloved Son. We thank you for the wonders of your mercy, and with heart and hand and voice we join with the whole Church in a new song of praise: Glory to you through Christ in the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
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.
“There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents …” (Lk 15:7a)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
A. ACTION PLAN: Pray that those who have strayed from the right path and negated the love of God may experience the gift of conversion and be fully reconciled with him. Let us strive to live out the forgiving mercy of God in the daily situations that confront us. By our works of justice and service to the poor, by our prophetic stance, let us alleviate the ill effects of structuralized sin and violence in modern society today.
B. ACTION PLAN: To help us respond to our challenge to incarnate Christ’s forgiving love, 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 (Vol. 3, n. 42): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US