Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, C
Wisdom 9: 13-18
Ps. 90
Philemon 9-10, 12-17
Luke 14: 25-33
“Who can conceive what the Lord intends?” says today’s First Reading. The First Reading and the Responsorial Psalm are focused on being open to what God is doing, and not being locked into what our reason or perception can tell us. The Gospel tells us that the call of the Kingdom has to have first priority in our lives. The word “hate” is very difficult for us to hear. What can it mean? It seems to mean this: all things in our lives must be surrendered to Jesus, as Lord. Once they are wholly His, He can give them back to us as He sees fit. St. Gregory the Great says: “In this world, let us love everyone, even though he be our enemy; but let us hate any who opposes us on our way to God, though he be our relative…we should, then, love our neighbor; we should have charity towards all—towards relatives and towards strangers—but without separating ourselves from the love of God, out of love for them.” In Evangelica homiliae, 37,3
Today’s Second Reading is the only time in the three-year cycle that we read from the Letter to Philemon.
In sending the slave Onesimus back to his master Philemon, a Christian whom Paul had converted. Paul asks that Onesimus be sent back to him, “no longer as a slave but as more than a slave—a beloved brother, especially dear to me.” While this action of Paul does not abolish slavery (a societal adjustment not possible to the infant Church), it did change the relationship between slave and master for those who truly knew Christ.
This hymn is based on today’s Readings:
Who knows the mind of God?
Feeble our human plans;
Yet paths made straight by Wisdom's light
Are guided on their way.
Planning to serve the Lord,
Choosing to take the cross
Means dying to our former self
And counting all as loss.
Teach us to count our days;
Give hearts Your wisdom's light;
At daybreak, fill us with Your love
And guard us through each night.
66.86.
suggested tune: St. Bride