13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C
Prayer
Loving Father,
Through Your Son, our Divine Physician, we are reconciled to You and brought to wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. Help us to celebrate your healing and forgiving love in our lives and to embrace the mission you have entrusted to us. Amen.
Commentary
1st Reading: 1 Kings: 19:16, 19-21
As Christians, we are called to embrace a new and radical mission by losing our old life in order to save our new life in Christ.
For example, in our 1st Reading, there is a sense of urgency on Elijah’s part to impart his spirit upon Elisha who would carry on his prophetic mission. Elisha must abandon his old way of life and learn from Elijah.
Elisha is allowed to kiss his father and mother goodbye and prepare for a new life-long journey as a prophet of God. He even takes the extreme steps of killing the oxen and using the plowing equipment as fuel to cook their flesh for food for his people to eat. This extreme measure is to show Elisha’s radical commitment to follow the Lord.
Our own departure from our old life — through faith and Baptism in Christ — must be just as radical (if not more) than Elisha’s own abandonment of his family.
Question:
What have you left behind to follow Jesus?
2nd Reading: Galatians 5:1, 13-18
As Elisha burned the yoke of the oxen in order to abandon his old way of life, St. Paul urges the Galatians not to “submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
There is a new freedom that is found in Christ. This freedom is not found in our old way of living where there is division. Rather, this new freedom is found in perfect communion with Christ and with our neighbor. For this reason, Paul reminds us of Christ’s command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Loving our neighbor as ourselves demands an abandonment of our old life and living by the Spirit. As Elisha radically departed his old way, our new life in the Spirit of Christ is a radical departure from the “desires of the flesh.”
The desires of the flesh are the self-preservations of the old life that only lead to death. The desires of the Spirit is a total surrender to a new life in Christ. We cannot desire a new life in Christ while remaining under the old yoke of death.
Question:
What does loving your neighbor as yourself mean to you?
Gospel: Luke 9:51-62
Jesus is determined to accept his cross as He and his disciples head toward Jerusalem. Along the way, they are confronted by Samaritans who will not let them pass. James and John (also called the Sons of Thunder) want to “call down fire from heaven to consume” the Samaritans, but Jesus rebukes them.
James and John have not grasped the message of total abandonment of their old life. Following Christ means to avoid division but embrace complete communion — a communion that can only be found in our new life in Christ.
The radical departure of our old way of life means resolutely following Christ wherever he goes. It also means that there is an urgency in our mission. As Christ has nowhere to lay his head, we must quickly make up our mind to follow him.
Either we are totally with the Lord, or we are not.
The radical departure means going a step further than Elisha’s departure from his family (1st Reading) who was allowed to kiss his parents goodbye. A complete and total departure of our old way of life means embracing Christ now. Our mission does not begin only after we get our items in order.
Question:
How are you responding to Jesus’ words, “Follow me?”
This Week’s Task
How would you rate yourself when it comes to embracing Christ’s mission in your parish? Are you …
__Actively engaged (ministering in some way)
__Engaged (go to church every Sunday)
__Disengaged (If you checked this, how will you move up the ladder?
Group Prayer
The group offers this prayer of abandonment:
Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.
— Ignatius of Loyola
The prayer continues with Psalm 16.
Psalm
Response: You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.”
R: You are my inheritance, O Lord.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R: You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R: You are my inheritance, O Lord.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.