Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 91
First Reading: Exodus 19:2-6a
In those days, the Israelites came to the desert of Sinai and pitched camp.
While Israel was encamped here in front of the mountain,
Moses went up the mountain to God.
Then the LORD called to him and said,
“Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob;
tell the Israelites:
You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians
and how I bore you up on eagle wings
and brought you here to myself.
Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,
you shall be my special possession,
dearer to me than all other people,
though all the earth is mine.
You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 100:1-2, 3, 5
R. (3c) We are his people: the sheep of his flock.
Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.
R. We are his people: the sheep of his flock.
Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
R. We are his people: the sheep of his flock.
The LORD is good:
his kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
R. We are his people: the sheep of his flock.
Second Reading: Romans 5:6-11
Brothers and sisters:
Christ, while we were still helpless,
yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person
one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood,
will we be saved through him from the wrath.
Indeed, if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,
how much more, once reconciled,
will we be saved by his life.
Not only that,
but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Alleluia: Mark 1:15
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent and believe in the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel: Matthew 9:36—10:8
At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.”
Then he summoned his twelve disciples
and gave them authority over unclean spirits
to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.
The names of the twelve apostles are these:
first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew;
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John;
Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector;
James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus;
Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.
Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus,
“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.
Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”
Reflection
We’re back to the season called Ordinary Time. However, there is nothing ordinary about salvation or anything which culminates in a soul getting closer to God by following His will. Such an issue does not follow seasons and is not bound by any time or period. Any day is a good day to start seeking God in one’s life. And when one becomes “right” with God or when one gets “closer” to God’s heart, the seasons in our faith’s liturgical calendar become rich with meaning and begin to offer clear historical perspective and theological depth. To be closer to God should be a lifetime mission for anyone who declares his love for God and is willing to dedicate his life to the mission of spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth. One cannot do the latter without the former and vice-verse. Remember, to spread the Gospel to the ends of the world may be as mundane being a good member of the family or as significant as being God’s messenger like a bishop or Moses in the First Reading.
To be closer to God presumes that we value our salvation because in the end, that is all that matters. We are all called to work on our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), not because Christ’s salvation is incomplete or sold at a price, thereby opening the opportunity for man to buy his way to heaven. We need to heed Saint Paul’s advice of working for our salvation with fear and trembling because the enemy is strong and cunning in his ways of snatching souls away from God. It is in this context that we need to be with God always, making sure that we never leave his side by falling away from grace.
For most Catholic Christians, we are called to simply offer our daily life to God by doing the ordinary routine extraordinarily and with holy purpose so that doubters and unbelievers can see that Jesus is truly alive in us.
First Reading
In our First Reading, God gives a message to Moses to be heralded to the House of Jacob a.k.a. House of Israel: “…if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
To be a people “close” to God’s heart, such a nation should listen to His voice (“hearken to my voice”) and obey Him (“keep my covenant”). These acts of listening and obeying God should not be your average daily item BUT must be the highlight that governs one’s very core of existence. The Word of God must be our principle concern in life but because we must do God’s will first and foremost. Nothing else should please us than to be pleasing to God.
In the Old Testament, God’s voice has always been revealed directly or relayed through the prophets and holy persons who have been ordained to serve God and his people. These people acted like ambassadors for God and some of them had to go through tremendous suffering for God’s plan to be fulfilled. Some of them were not even from the House of Jacob. It is both a privilege and a responsibility to be a messenger from God. In the same way, being God’s chosen people is both a privilege and a responsibility. Keeping the Covenant with God is, in itself, a great responsibility because God’s will is to bring everyone into covenant relations with Him. God’s relationship with man has always been and will always be through forging covenants.
The verse quoted also emphasizes that it is listening that qualifies as a very important element in our relationship with God. In fact, listening is a great sustainer and fertilizer to any relationship either with God or with others. Our God is all-knowing. Therefore, it stands to reason that we must always take time to be still and ask the Lord to speak to our hearts. In our world of loud and ambient noise, from opinions and comments, we need to go off-the-grid and connect with God, and the more frequently we do this, the better it will be for us. Remember, God wills only our good because of His unconditional and limitless love for us. The more we do things using our own capabilities and the more we take God out from our decision making, the more we get into trouble.
We must also remember that listening to God’s voice should be our inspiration to keep our Covenant obligations and be faithful to it. Keeping our Covenant relations with God is the “obeying” part of the equation. In other words, we listen to God and we obey what He tells us. This should be our daily agenda in life and everything should flow from this practice of listening and obeying Him who is Lord of all. For most people, they wouldn’t hear an audible sound of a voice coming from an unseen man. For most of us, we have already heard God’s voice in our hearts because it simply demands a very basic thing in life—that we love one another!
Gospel
Today’s Gospel is about the call of the workers who labor in God’s vineyard. This is also the “obeying” part mentioned in the First Reading. As you well know, the whole world is God’s vineyard and the mission is to spread God’s Word to others, especially to those who have not yet heard or seen to glory of the Lord, so that they too may hear and be saved. The Gospel is also about praying to the God, who is the Master of the Harvest, for Him to send more workers to the vineyard.
It is true that the phrase “laborers working in the Lord’s vineyard” refers to priests. However, it is also refers to the laity and all baptized Christians who take to heart the command contained in the Great Commissioning in Matthew 28: “…make disciples of the all nations.” The “harvest” refers to all those who have not heard about Christ or those who have given up their discipleship.
What is at stake here is ‘the harvest’ or more importantly, ‘to secure and keep the harvest safe’. It is true that God is Almighty and He can secure the harvest on His own. But that would defeat the very purpose of Christianity as a faith community and family of the chosen people of God.
Remember, the Church built by Jesus is the New Israel and we are it. Therefore, what was said in the First Reading applies to us, and that is ‘to hearken to God’s voice’ and keep the new and everlasting Covenant sealed with the blood of the Lamb. We are the new priestly Kingdom of God, and we are duty-bound to gather others and bring them closer to our Lord. Our constitution as a priestly clan was confirmed by St. Peter when he said: “…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
As a priestly clan, we are called to mediate between our fellowman and God, and this is the reason why Jesus left behind His priests or those ordained to the sacerdotal life because Christianity is indeed about shepherding others closer to God. This is also the reason why our Lord Jesus calls us to pray to the Master of the Harvest for Him to send more workers to the vineyard. The harvest is abundant but the harvesters are few; there is so much work but there are only a few workers who can be tasked. Jesus’ solution is: “…ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
The Easter Season may be over but we are still basking in the perpetual glory of Easter because Christ already defeated death. This is the Gospel worth preaching even if it takes one to climb the highest mountain and sail the seven seas. The pathway to life is already set and cleared for all mankind. What remains to do is to listening and to obey God Word, Jesus the Christ. It is imperative that we abide by Him and in Him who is the Vine. Our aim is for us to be the branches of the Vine and never be pruned away by the Master of the Harvest, left to dry and burned. Attached to Christ, we have life and we flourish. Detached from Christ, we wither away and die.
Second Reading
Today’s Second Reading is one of St. Paul’s masterpieces in explaining how Jesus paid for every sin committed before and after His death on the Cross, and how Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden becomes an important reckoning point.
Man’s disobedience in the Garden not only made him sin against God and discovered what evil was, he also lost his preter-natural gifts of innocence and immortality. As a consequence, man became spiritually broken and vulnerable to committing sin, which even became a predilection for some. In other words, man’s brokenness puts him at odds with God. Some, by virtue to their continuing sin, are always at odds with God and this is NOT why God created man.
It is in this context that God rolls out his plan to save mankind and it is rooted in His unconditional love—that God decided to love man, a mere creature and elevate him to the status of child. This is no ordinary love. It is the kind which is described in Greek as “agape”, as differentiated from “phileo” (affectionate love), “storge” (familial, natural love) and “eros” (romantic, passionate love). It is divine love and the good news is that man possesses this capability of loving like God because we were created by Him who is love personified. It is a “whatever-it-takes” kind of love.
The plan is for God to send us His only begotten Son: “Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6). Jesus took on human flesh precisely to bridge the divine and the temporal orders in His person, so that He can give His life away, as expiation, to appease God and for man’s salvation. Man has been made right and justified by Christ and His death. God knew that man’s knowledge of evil and sin, a consequence from disobedience and fall from the Garden, would weaken his resolve towards good and would make him helpless against the forces of evil. Sin truly makes ungodly people out of some.
Jesus, being God, knew that some will reject the Father and the Son and become unworthy of salvation and divine adoption. But He still offered His life to take away the sins of the world because it was the will of the Father that all be saved by believing in the Son (see John 6:40 & 1 Tim 2:4). Saint Paul declares how difficult it was for the Son of Man to die for mankind: “Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:7-8). This only proves how much God loves man.
“How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Rom 5:9-10). God did everything just to reconcile us to Himself, even to the point of dying on the Cross for both the righteous and the sinners. Every single person, past-present-future, was and is justified because of Jesus. In other words, God has opened to us every single access there is available for us to reach heaven IF ONLY WE BELIEVE IN GOD AND IN JESUS WHOM HE SENT (see John 17:3). Believing in Christ means abiding in Him until the end of our earthly existence because after our earthly lives, we no longer need to believe, we only have to see God face-to-face and appreciate the glory of the Trinity.
A blessed Sunday to everyone.
– Gospel reflection by Kuya Rommel Cecilio of SLRP Bible Apostolate Ministry