Solemnity
Friday after the Second Sunday
after Pentecost
White vestments
Sacramentary: page 350, Gloria & Creed - Lectionary 1: 3 readings, no. 170
Themes: Divine Love
Deuteronomy: Moses speaks of God’ love
1 John: God is love
Matthew: Jesus, meek and humble of heart
Deuteronomy 7:6-11 - Moses addressing the people:
God’s loving heart
has made them Sacred people
"You are a people sacred to
the Lord, your God.
He has chosen you from all the
nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly His own.
It was not because you are the
largest of all nations that the Lord set His heart on you and chose you,
for you are really the smallest of all nations.
It was
because the Lord loved you and because of His fidelity to the oath He had sworn
to your fathers, that He brought you out with his strong hand from the place of
slavery, and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. “
A
Promise and a Warning
“Understand,
then, that the Lord, your God, is God: indeed, the faithful God who keeps his
merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love him
and keep His commandments, but Who repays with destruction a person who hates
Him. [...] You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments, the
statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today."
1 John 4:7-16 - part 3: love for one another
God is love. Therefore...
“Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God , everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God .
Whoever is without love does not
know God, for God is love.”
The Revelation of
His Love
“In this way the love of God was
revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the
world so that we might have life through him.
In this is love : not that we have
loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. “
We must love
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.”
Love unites us to
God
“God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in Him.”
Matthew 11:25-30 - Jesus reacts to His opposition
Knowing God
“No one knows the Son except the
Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son
wishes to reveal Him.”
Invitation - His
Heard is meek ad humble
"Come to Me, all you who labor
and are burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from
Me, for I am meek and humble of heart,
and you will find rest for
yourselves, for My yoke is easy, and My burden light."
Questions
Deuteronomy: Who was Moses? Why is his exhortation appropriate the solemnity?
1 John: What does John say about love? How can we know God? How is this “love” different from what the world calls “love”?
Matthew: How can we know God? What does the meek and humble of heart of Jesus invite us to do?
Petitions
Deuteronomy: That we show our love of God by our obedience to His commandments, we pray to the Lord.
1 John: That our motivation always involve the love of God, we pray to the Lord,
Matthew: That we not forget the invitation of Christ’s heart, we pray to the Lord.
Hosea 11 1 3-4 8Y-9
Thus
says the Lord:
When
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk - who took them in My arms;
I drew them with human cords, with bands of love;
I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks.
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was
their healer.
My heart is overwhelmed. My
pity is stirred.
I will not give vent to my blazing anger.
I will not destroy Ephraim again,
for I am God and not a man, the Holy One present among you;
I will not let the flames consume you.
Ephesians 3: 8-12 14-19
To me,
the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given:
to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ,
and to
bring to light for all
what
is the plan of the mystery, - hidden from ages past in God Who created all
things -
so
that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church
to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.
This
was according to the eternal purpose that He accomplished in Christ Jesus our
Lord,
in Whom we have boldness of speech, and confidence of access through
faith in Him.
For
this reason I kneel before the Father,
from
whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, [1]
that He
may grant you - in accord with the riches of His glory -
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self ,
and
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that
you - rooted and grounded in love –
may
have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones
what
is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to
know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
so
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
John 19.31-37
Since
it was preparation day,
in
order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the Sabbath,
- for
the Sabbath day of that week was a solemn one -
the
Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken and they He taken down.
So the
soldiers came and broke the legs of the first
and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
When
they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead,
they
did not break His legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into His side,
and
immediately blood and water flowed out.
An
eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true.
He
knows that he is speaking the truth so that you also may come to believe.
For
this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:
“Not a bone of it will be broken.”
And
again another passage says: “They will look upon Him
whom they have pierced.”
Ezekiel 34:11-16
Thus
says the Lord God:
I Myself will look after and tend my sheep.
As a shepherd tends his flock when he finds himself among his
scattered sheep,
so will I tend my sheep.
I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered
when it was cloudy and dark.
I will lead them out from among the peoples and gather them
from the foreign lands;
I will bring them back to their own country
and pasture them upon the mountains of
in the land's ravines and all its inhabited places.
In good pastures will I pasture them,
and on the mountain heights of
There they shall lie down on good grazing ground,
and in rich pastures shall they be pastured, on the mountains of
I Myself will pasture My sheep;
I Myself will give them rest, says the Lord God.
The lost I will seek out.
The strayed I will bring back. The
injured I will bind up.
The sick I will heal, but the sleek and the strong I will
destroy,
shepherding them rightly.
Romans
5: 5b-11
The
love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.
For
Christ, while we were still helpless, 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.
Luke 15:3-7
Jesus
addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes:
"What man among
you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them
would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert
and go after the lost one until he finds it?
And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with
great joy
and, upon his arrival home,
he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them:
'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'
I tell you, in just the same way
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of
repentance."
[1] The Latin is “Huius rei gratia flecto genua mea ad Patrem, ex quo omnis paternitas in caelis et in terra nominator”.