Will I Hear These Readings Next Year?

Will I hear these Readings next year? Suppose I am not alive to hear them ... what should I do?



Sept. 25th - XXVI Sunday in Ordinary Time


The First Reading this Sunday is also found on the first Friday of Lent - a useful reminder of the need to straighten out our lives as the penitential Seasons begins. Always there is the thought: is this the last time I will hear this Reading and, if so, what is my spiritual situation? The overall theme of the liturgy today is one of forgiveness and perhaps in situations where we would not quite expect it. On the other hand - ominously - we may have instances where people simply have forgotten the whole concept of sin and are in great danger of damnation. Looking out at today's confused world there is immense material suffering but, in the midst of this pain, there is a real danger that we will overlook the - allegedly - 20 million Catholics who have now calmly left the Church and seems quite happy about it. A victory for Satan? Well, you can bet he is not displeased. As I often say, if he had a face he's be smiling and,if he had hands, he'd be rubbing them!a,br />

The Responsorial Psalm is once again the prayer of the repentant sinner and, seeing that some of us at least are in that category, we might incorporate this Psalm into our daily prayers with significant gain in terms of variety.


The Second Reading offers a more positive slant: St. Paul wants our daily lives to be high-toned ones which have long since ruled out serious sin and have been changed into lives of serene repentance, humility and - as a result - compassion for ourselves first of all - no useless regrets about the past - and then love and compassion for all others. The Reading ends with an ancient hymn to the Lord which St. Paul made his own in this Letter.


"Actions, not just words," could be seen as the theme of the Gospel which offers a third aspect of sin and forgiveness as contrasted with the preceding Sundays. The Lord applies his words to the disbelieving religious leaders but they are relevant in a general sense: " Not those who say to me: 'Lord! Lord! But those who DO the will of my Father." Perhaps this is what happened to our modern Church: for too long there was observance without real commitment - doing things by rote or for fear of what the neighbors might say or simply because a number didn't quite know how else to pass the early hours on Sunday. All that has changed, shaky convictions have been toppled and we have the distressing picture of mature men and women - not just teenagers - living in situations they themselves would have condemned twenty years ago. God forgive them and God forgive all of us!


~ September 2011 Concord