Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
GOD, OUR FATHER
LETTER TO THE ROMANS:
We invite you to watch and listen to four videos of Fr. Claudio Doglio on the Letter to the Romans.
This is the third video: https://spark.adobe.com/page/opsydYwhGr7YT/
Introduction
We are sons and daughters of God because the Spirit of Christ, the perfect Son, is alive in us. With Christ and through his Spirit, we can call God our Father. He is a father with a love warm and tender as that of a mother. God is not a paternalistic Father. He respects our freedom. He wants us to be responsible and mature and to give him a free answer of love. He wants us to serve him as spiritual people, that is, people moved by the Spirit, without any slavish attitude.
Opening Prayer
God, your Spirit makes us cry out to you:
“God, our Father!”
Do not allow us any longer
to serve you in slavery to any law
but in a spirit of sons and daughters,
all your children,
that makes us go far beyond the law.
Yes, make us see and practice,
that we are committed to your person,
through bonds of love,
in response to your gratuitous love,
which sought us out personally
even before we were aware of it.
We thank you for being our Father
through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Reading 1: Rom 8:12-17
we are not debtors to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.
Responsorial Psalm:Ps 68:2 and 4, 6-7ab, 20-21
God arises; his enemies are scattered,
and those who hate him flee before him.
But the just rejoice and exult before God;
they are glad and rejoice.
R. Our God is the God of salvation.
The father of orphans and the defender of widows
is God in his holy dwelling.
God gives a home to the forsaken;
he leads forth prisoners to prosperity.
R. Our God is the God of salvation.
Blessed day by day be the Lord,
who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.
God is a saving God for us;
the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
R. Our God is the God of salvation.
Alleluia: Jn 17:17b, 17a
Your word, O Lord, is truth;
consecrate us in the truth.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel: Lk 13:10-17
And a woman was there who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?”
When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.
Intercessions
– For the Church, the body of Christ, that it may not be divided into factions and that it may become to all a sign of unity and love, we pray:
– For the whole wide world, that all peoples may discover that God loves them tenderly as his sons and daughters, we pray:
– For all of us, that we may forgive one another from the heart, seek no revenge, bear no grudges, and learn to see others as people loved by the same Father, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
Great and holy God,
we may call you Father
for we are truly your sons and daughters.
God, accept our thanks
through Jesus, your Son,
who came among us
to make us your children.
As he will be with us,
in these signs of bread and wine,
may he give us a deeper spirit
of being your sons and daughters
that we may serve you as he did,
with a love that does not weight the cost
but is always responsive to your love for ever.
Prayer after Communion
God our Father,
as we go back to our work and to people,
may your Spirit be truly our guide in life.
As the Spirit of love, may he help us
to see the needs and sufferings of those around us,
to feel with them and to help them;
as the Spirit of freedom,
may he make us responsible and mature
with the maturity to which you call us
in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Blessing
Free sons and daughters of the Father, that is what we are. How great, and yet we know all this is a free gift from God. God has made us his children through our brother Jesus Christ. May he keep blessing you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Straighten up!
God intends the human person to stand erect and free to look up to heaven. But we have been attracted by the allure of this earth. We begin to bow our heads down to have a closer look at these things and let ourselves be enchanted by these passing and momentary pleasures that make us not only lose track of time but forget what the Creator meant us to be. Until one day, we find ourselves bowed and bent. We cannot look up to heaven anymore but only have our gaze down on the earth we have become attached to.
Jesus comes to make us stand straight again, to restore us to our original posture with God so that we may have our sight fixed on eternity and not on this passing world. Yet we find it difficult to return to our original state; we have been used to feeling comfortable with our bent position, looking down and oblivious to the wide blue sky above.
Oh, if only you would let him put his hands on you to heal you from your infirmity so that you may straighten up!