15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C
Prayer
Loving Father,
Help us to celebrate your healing and forgiving love in our lives; especially through the Sacraments of the Anointing of the Sick and Reconciliation. Amen.
Commentary
1st Reading: Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Moses offers a final farewell to the Israelites as he sends them forth into the Promised Land. His farewell includes acommand to love God with one’s whole heart and soul.
As people of faith, we understand that love is the only remedy for bringing about wholeness. Love is the only reason for healing and forgiveness. It is what gives us reason to be on mission with Christ. In the end, love is the summation of all that we do and all that we are.
When we consider that God is love, we must approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation from the angle of love. To be reconciled is to be brought back into a communion of love with our God through Jesus. It is not merely a confession of our sins so that we can go back to our own life’s mission. Unless we have a desire to embrace a mission with God who is love, our approach to the Sacrament of Reconciliation comes up short.
The command of love is “not too mysterious or remote” for us. We “have only to carry it out.”
Question:
For what purpose do you approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation?
2nd Reading: Colossians 1:15-20
The Sacrament of Reconciliation begins and ends with Jesus Christ, “the image of the invisible God,” through whom all things were created. It is also through him that we are reconciled to the Father “by the blood of his cross.”
Jesus says that the two commands — to love God and your neighbor as yourself —are the foundation for all the laws and the prophets. Saint Paul reminds us that Jesus IS the foundation and in him “all things are held together.”
Jesus is Love because Jesus is God. Whenever we want to really embrace a mission of love, we must embrace Jesus.
We have the opportunity to embrace our Lord through our daily prayers and meditations, through the reading of Scripture and weekly sharing of the word of God through our Christ in our Neighborhood program, and — most importantly — through the Sacramental life of the Church; including the Eucharist as well as the Sacraments of Healing and Forgiveness.
Question:
How are you actively embracing Jesus?
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37
Our Gospel today on the great commands to Love God with our whole heart, being, strength, and mind and to love our neighbor and ourselves sums up our reason and purpose to embrace a mission with Christ.
A common thought is that we can pick our friends, but we can’t pick our family. However, as Christians, we cannot even pick our friends. Jesus challenges us to see that we are unable to be selective when it comes to the question, “Who is my neighbor?
It is clear from the Gospel that there was no love lost between Jews and Samaritans at the time Jesus presented this parable. However, for Christ, both Jews and Samaritans are loved equally and both are equally redeemable. Redemption is for Jews, Samaritans, and all of humanity. The Lord is not selective.
In him, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. All are one in God’s eyes and all are loved. If God’s love is boundless, there cannot be boundaries for us when it comes to love of neighbor.
Question:
Who is your neighbor?
This Week’s Task
If you found this series spiritually helpful to you, consider making an attempt to embrace the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the grace that comes with it.
Perhaps you and your group would consider going to Reconciliation together this coming week and then sharing a meal together in praise and thanksgiving for abing in the grace of Christ our Redeemer.
Group Prayer
The group offers the following prayer:
Lord, help me to love you with all of my heart, my soul, and my strength. Let me love my neighbor as myself.
I trust in your love for me. Amen.
The prayer continues with Psalm 69
Psalm
Response: Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
I pray to you, O LORD,
for the time of your favor, O God!
In your great kindness answer me with your constant help.
Answer me, O LORD, for bounteous is your kindness:
in your great mercy turn toward me.
R: Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
I am afflicted and in pain;
let your saving help, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
R: Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
“See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.”
R: Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
For God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
The descendants of his servants shall inherit it,
and those who love his name shall inhabit it.