ĐÀO TẠO MÔN ĐỆ - REFLECTION 22ND SUNDAY - C
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- Category: 9. Đào Tạo Môn Đệ
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MƠ NGUYỄNAug 31 at 3:25 AM
TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME / C
01 SEPTEMBER 2019
Blest Are They
REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL (Luke 14:1, 7-14)
PREPARING FOR GOD’S HOSPITALITY
As so often in Luke’s Gospel, the event described in the Gospel takes place at a banquet to which Jesus has been invited. He notices that the guests, as soon as they arrive, inevitably choose the highest, most honourable places.
His comment on this behaviour may seem to be simply a piece of commonsense wisdom: choose the lowest place because if there has to be a rearrangement (to seat everyone according to rank), it’s much better to be promoted to a higher place than to be demoted. Think of the humiliation, the loss of face involved!
However, the fact that this episode has been introduced as a ‘parable’ means that something more significant than everyday advice is at stake. The parable refers to the great reversal that is to come with the full arrival of the Kingdom, when God will enrich the poor and uplift the lowly (see the Magnificat [1:51-53] and the Beatitudes [6: 20-26]). Those who choose now to sit with the poor and marginalised are destined for ‘promotion’; those who sit with the rich and powerful will find themselves sent down to the lowes places.
Jesus has taken an image from everyday life and made of it, not so much a moral maxim, as a profound statement of the implications of the Gospel. Associate now with the poor and befriend them. At present they may se em to have nothing to offer. But being hospitable to them now stores up for you the welcome that truly matters: the welcome into the hospitality of God that lasts forever.
Brendan Byrne, SJ
Magnificat - Mary's Song (with lyrics):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_iixWJo-7k
Magnificat - Mary's Song
Blest Are They (with lyrics):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwSkmzw8dY8