AllSts20.   Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14.  This book is a form of apocalyptic literature which conveys its messages through symbolic and not literal language and forms.  The number ‘one hundred and forty-four thousand’ or twelve times twelve times one thousand is symbolic.  It is a way of saying that that is the group of people that God thinks should be in heaven: no more, no less.  It is not saying that that is the exact numerical amount that is in heaven.  The amount of souls who are in heaven meet God’s expectation of the amount or perfect number in God’s eyes who would choose to faithfully serve God’s Will.  They are the saints who adore God now and forever.  The last lines of this reading refer to those who endured persecution and remained faithful.

Matthew 5:1-13.  In his chapter 5 Matthew selects Jesus’ words and statements that show that his new people are distinct from the Old Testament People of God.  They are expected to develop further and beyond from the Old Testament People of God.  In his beatitudes Jesus outlines that interior development or maturation process that goes far beyond the Old Testament Torah or Law that are expressed in the Ten Commandments.  The beatitudes internalize what the Torah only did externally.  The beatitudes call for a new holy person to be made; whereas before, the Law only required external things to be done without necessarily changing the inner person to develop into a holy person.

1 John 3:1-3.  “Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.”  By our baptism we have become children of God our Father. We have the right to be saints in heaven if daily we join ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit who enables us to grow in holiness.  As the suffering and crucifixion were not easy for Jesus, our day by day development in holiness is not and will not be easy for us.  We must live as strangers in a world that treats us as rejected foreigners.  In Matthew 10:34b Jesus said, “I have come not to bring peace but the sword.” In John 15:19 b, c, Jesus said: “But because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.”  Holiness and worldliness are directly opposed to one another.  If the world sees us for who we truly are, it will treat us as an absurdity.  As we grow daily to be more and more into the children of God, our goal is to be “like him” so that one can see that we are truly his children in his image and likeness.

30A20.   Exodus 22:20-26.   There are many laws in the Old Testament but the underlying absolute rule is to act and think as God acts and thinks.    Jesus in Matthew 16:23c rebukes Peter as he says, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Today’s reading says one must return the neighbor’s cloak that was given as a pledge “before sunset; for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.  What else has he to sleep in?  If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate.”  The word compassionate literally means that God feels what the needy neighbor feels.  God unites himself to the one who is needy and who pleads to God for help.  In Jesus’ parable in Matthew 26: 25, the king says to those who did not help the needy, “what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”  As God said above, “for I am compassionate, which is to say, God feels what the needy neighbor feels.

Matthew 22:34-40.    Jesus says, “This is the greatest and the first commandment.”  “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This means that everything, without exception, belongs to God.  The second says one is to love his neighbor, which one’s fellow countryman, as one loves one self.  In John 13:34 Jesus changes that second commandment saying, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so also you should love one another.”  With this change we are not only to love our neighbor but also everyone including our enemies.  In Matthew 5:43-45 Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he  makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  In John 5:48 Jesus sums up by saying, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect” (holy).  If we fully respect and treat God as our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our minds, then for us he is the measure of everything.  His Will that is infinitely more expansive than the Ten Commandments is life for us.  In place of the Torah or Law of the Old Testament, the divine Person of God and his Will is now our law and measure of who we should be and how we should live.

1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10.  Paul makes a great point of how preaching the gospel is accomplished by one’s manner of life when he writes: “you know what sort of people we were;” “You became imitators of us and of the Lord;” “You became a model for all the believers.”  We preach Jesus by what and how we live and by the living examples of faith we have become.  The Thessalonians “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” Paul says of the Thessalonians, “In every place your faith in gone has gone forth.”  They lived the love of God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind and by their love of one another.

30A.   Exodus 22:20-26.  Yahweh was mindful of the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt.  He was compassionate for them and so released them from their captivity.  In line with this Sunday’s first reading, Leviticus 19:32-34 also says, “When an alien resides with you in your land, do not molest him.  You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt. I, the Lord, am your God.”  God treats with compassion all peoples and wants us to do the same.  God finds it reprehensible to take advantage of others, when we have the opportunity, by doing them harm.

Matthew 22:34-40.  In Matthew 22:37 Jesus replies to his questioner, “You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”  On reading this, I have always asked myself, if you truly love God with absolutely everything you have, you would nothing left with which to love yourself or your neighbor.  In turn I have thought that, if you truly love God, then you must love his Will for you.  His Will for us is that we love everyone he loves.   1 Jn. 4:20-21 says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.  This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”  Also 1 Jn. 3:15-18 reads, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.  The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?  Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.”

1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10.  As it said in the quote just before, as the Lord laid down his life for us, so we ought to lay down our lives for others.  This reading calls us to be imitators of Jesus and so to be a model for all believers, as in the lives of the Thessalonian Christians something of Jesus himself was seen.  Paul and Jesus are calling upon us to love as we have been loved so that in every place our faith in God goes forth like seeds to sow faith in others.  As with those to whom Paul wrote this letter, we are to turn away from the allurements of this world “to serve the living and true God and to await his Son,” “Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.”  Jesus says in Jn. 13:34-35, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how all will know that you are my disciples, you have love for one another.”

29A20.    Isaiah: 1, 4-6.    In Isaiah 10:6 God sends Assyria to punish unfaithful Israel.    Much later in this first reading God also used Cyrus to work his divine Will by moving him to liberate the captive Hebrews.  Cyrus entered Babylon without a fight because, more than likely, he had built up allies within the city who opened the gates to him.  Cyrus seems to have been a master of diplomacy by gaining victories without going to war.  Cyrus may have been looking forward to building a nation friendly to him by releasing the Hebrew captives and helping them financially to rebuild Israel.  God declares his divinity: “I am the Lord, there is no other.”  God declares to Cyrus and to all the world, “It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun, people may know that there is none besides me.”  God is the root source of all that is truly good.  It does not matter that the agent of the good believes in God or not.

Matthew 22:15-21.  The Pharisees hated the Roman occupation of Israel whereas the Herodians embraced and profited from it.  Both hated Jesus because the people went to him and not them.  The old phrase is the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  So they joined forces against Jesus.  They thought they had the perfect trap.  If Jesus chose to pay the taxes, he was the enemy of the Jewish people who hated Roman occupation.  If Jesus chose to refuse to pay taxes to the emperor, he would be executed by the Roman troops. They were sure they had him. His answered stunned them.  “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  In John 19:10a-11, Pilate said to Jesus, “Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you?” Jesus answered, ‘You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”  God, the source of all power, empowers us to make choices as he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Although empowered by God, he allows us to choose good or evil; despite the fact that the power to make that choice came to us from God.  What belonged to Caesar was a gift to him from God.  In the first reading it was God who empowered Cyrus, though Cyrus had no idea who the God of Israel was.  Let us adore our God and beg him to help us use the resources he has given us to accomplish his Will.

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b.  Paul writes: “For our gospel did not come to you by word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”  The Holy Spirit gave the Thessalonians strength to accept Jesus and he gave Paul and his helpers the power to preach the good news of Jesus Christ our Savior.  All that is good is gift from God.

29A.   Isaiah 45:1, 4-6.  The Lord makes King Cyrus, his anointed, savior or messiah of the Jewish people who freed them from their captivity and aided in their reestablishment as the Jewish nation.  Cyrus was a non-Jew.  “I called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not.”   It is God in his greatness who empowered Cyrus and any others who do truly good things in all of the events of humanity, whether they know God or not.  Our reading quotes God as saying, “I am the Lord, there is other.” It is by the power of God that goodness comes to this earth, though he may choose many instruments or various people to work his Will.

Matthew 22:15-21.  These last three Sundays in the readings from Matthew, Jesus makes it clear to the chief priests and the elders that they will no part in the kingdom of God because they have refused to have Jesus as the anointed, savior or messiah of the Jewish nation.  The Jewish leaders in turn plot to entrap Jesus by luring him into saying something that will put him at odds with either the Jewish people or the Roman authorities.  “Knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?  Show me the coin that pays the census tax.’ Then they handed him the Roman coin.  He said to them, ‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’  They replied, ‘Caesar’s.’  At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  I am always in awe at the ingeniousness of this response.  The glory of God shines through in his answer.  I am sure that they were stunned.  Jesus was not making any attempt to reason with them, since they were beyond any willingness of mind to be reasoned with but was simply fending off their attack.  The truth is that all authority comes from God and God alone.  Jesus says later to Pilate in John 19:11a, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”  As the first reading indicated, Cyrus was anointed king by God’s power and so it was with Caesar and anyone who is ever given authority in this world.  God himself claimed that authority in the first reading by saying, “I am the Lord, there is no other.”

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b. Writing to the church in Thessalonica, Paul gives thanks to God knowing “how you were chosen.  For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”  The power is the power of the Holy Spirit’s grace conferred on the Thessalonians who with much conviction accept his spiritual life within them.  As God moved King Cyrus and also spoke through Jesus against the errant Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, God now moves the Thessalonians.  “I am the Lord, there is no other.”  Paul calls to mind the Thessalonians’ “work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord.”  These are the three theological virtues, like three pie slices forming a complete circle that is the wholeness of a full Christian life, putting our faith in his love for us gives us the hope for the eternal happiness that helps us to endure through the trials of this world.

28A20.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.   This reading begins and ends with the words “on this mountain,” referring physically to Mount Zion and in Jerusalem (Isaiah 24:23c).   From a spiritual point of view, I understand this phrase to mean that this mountain was the place of soul where God came down to his people and his people lifted themselves or reached up to God.  This section of Isaiah is referred to as the ‘Apocalypse of Isaiah’ to provide a hope or dream of what God would someday do for his people who were still captives living in a foreign land.  “On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death itself.”  I understand Isaiah to mean that God will destroy the worldliness or lack of God-centeredness that leads to so much misery and devastation on this earth that can only end in death.  He would wipe away every tear and especially the reproach or slavery of his people.  Because “the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain,” there will be the kind of rejoicing among all peoples that one experiences at a spectacular, wondrous banquet.  He is the God who spreads the table before us; our cup overflows (Psalm 23).

Matthew 22:1-14.   Again Jesus delivers a parable to the chief priests and the elders.  He is accusing them of being the ones who reject God’s invitation to come to the feast for his son Jesus.  They will be the ones who will be destroyed because they will murder God’s son and their city will be destroyed.  All other peoples would be invited to the heavenly banquet.  The symbolism of the man who attended the wedding feast without a wedding garment is of someone who was not there to embrace the joy of the king but only to partake of the food and drink.  To accept God’s invitation means that we choose to belong to God and to nothing else.  The feast that all were invited to was to have Christ as their life.  Those who do not have Christ as their life will be cast “into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20.  The Church in Philippi offers assistance to Paul.  Paul writes that he is able to do well whether he has little or a lot, as he says, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”  Paul teaches them to do the same, when he says, “My God will supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”   In these three readings we are told to put our faith in our all-provident God who rejoices in being a father who gives his children good things, because he loves us so much.

28A.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.  This is from the section of Isaiah called the Apocalypse of Isaiah, where Isaiah looks to the victory of Yahweh over the forces of evil to which God’s people had succumb, leading to their captivity; and, in turn, for those who remain loyal to the Lord.  The theme of this Sunday’s readings is that God provides for those who choose God.  ‘On this mountain’, probably meaning God’s seat among his people, Jerusalem, Yahweh provides a victorious feast for his people who have stayed with him through their reproach or shame of captivity, to which they have been delivered because of their sin.  In our New Testament world, this food and wine has been seen as a reference to the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  The veil, shroud or pall is the death of sin or rejection of obedience to God that God wipes away or swallows up by his grace, the force of his salvation from our sins.  “Let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!  For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain,” Jerusalem, from which he reaches out to provide salvation to all who accept him as their God and King.

Matthew 22:1-14.  The parable of the invitation to the wedding feast of the king’s son would most readily interpreted as the invitation to heaven; however, I personally prefer to think of it as the invitation to dine each day here on this earth as well as in heaven with the king’s Son, Jesus.  Those who refuse primarily would be the people and leaders of the Chosen people; but secondarily are all those of all times who refused the invitation of the grace of God that leads to the feast.  Rejection of the invitation to enjoy God’s grace leads to the fires of hell.  I interpret the lack of the wedding garment to mean to superficially enter into church life without participating fully in heart and mind.  To feast daily with the Lord is to enjoy his life and person as an essential part of our life and to live in submission of his dominion as king over us.

Philippians 4:12-14.  Paul says he knows “of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”  God provides through thick and thin if we have him as our life.  Paul thanks the Philippians who help him in his difficulties.  He calls upon the Philippians to depend upon God as he has done. “My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

Psalm 23.  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”  “You spread the table before me.”  “My cup overflows.”  The theme of the generosity of the Lord, his endless providence, continues in this psalm.  He makes our life, here and hereafter, an endless feast with the goodness of having him as the foundation of our daily life.  But also he shepherds us.  “He guides me in right paths”  “I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.”  “Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life.”  That does not mean that life is easy and painless but that, through it all, he is with me.  I live daily in his strength.  I am always secure and joyful.

27A20.   Isaiah 5:1-7.  “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?”  God had done everything to make Judah his holy people but without any good result.  “Then  he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes.”  Frustrated with Judah‘s failure to grow to be God’s holy people, God said of Judah, the vineyard of God, “Yes, I will make it a ruin.”  God demand results from his work in gracing us.  If we refused to make use of his graces to grow in holiness, he will abandon us to the results of our sinfulness.

Matthew 21:33-43.   Jesus addresses this parable to the chief priests and elders.   Their ancestors killed the prophets and now their children, the chief priests and the elders, were to kill the son of God so they could take charge of the vineyard, the children of God.  The chief priests and the elders, not realizing at first that the tenants Jesus was referring to were themselves, they responded to Jesus’ question of what the owner should do with the tenants who had done such evil things, saying, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.”  They were predicting what would happen to them who themselves were the wretched tenants.  They would be deposed as the leaders of God’s people.  The vineyard, God’s people, would be given to others who would produce a holy people.   As in the first reading, God demands that the graces he gives us are productive.  Failure to be responsible, that is to respond to God’ graces and produce the results that God wants of us, will lead to a grave punishment.

Philippians 4:6-9.   In the verse before this reading Paul says, “The Lord is near!”  That is to say, be confident. “Have no anxiety at all.”  Make your needs known to God and God will give you what you need.  “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  In other words, rest in the strength of God.  Be true to God and all he calls you to, as he is true to you. “Then the God of peace will be with you.”  It is only when we do not cooperate with the graces God gives us that the chaos and confusion of this world overwhelm us.

27A.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.  One can only imagine that Isaiah actually sung this to the people.  The vineyard is the people of Jerusalem and Judah.  Yahweh had prepared the people to be a holy people.  As if they were a vineyard, he had given them the Law, the Temple, the prophets; appointed the priests to produce a harvest of holiness.  Instead of growing into a holy people, they were like a yield of wild grapes, a people unfaithful to the Lord.  Rejected by his people, Yahweh made his vineyard into a ruin and allowed first the Assyrians and then Babylonians to trample and destroy the kingdom, first of Israel and then of Judah.  All that was left was bloodshed and the outcry of despair.

Matthew 21:33-43.  Jesus draws upon the images given in Isaiah’s sung parable to pronounce at the beginning of Holy Week a second parable (the first was last week’s gospel) to the chief priests and the elders of the people.  The landowner, again as the image of God, prepared a vineyard, a setting for his people to become a holy people.  However, now Jesus presents the tenants, those in charge of overseeing the care of the vineyard, as the villains.  Yahweh sent his servants, the prophets to obtain to obtain his produce, the holiness, or righteousness of the people but the tenants, the chief priests and the elders, rejected God’s servants, the prophets.  Finally, God sends his Son, Jesus himself, but at the end of Holy Week they kill him hoping to secure for themselves sole possession of God’s people and land, the vineyard.  Jesus says to the chief priests and elders, the tenants of the parable, “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”  Jesus quotes the Scripture that the builders, once again referring to the chief priests and elders, rejected the cornerstone, Jesus, sent by the Father.  They tried to become the cornerstone themselves; but instead, they lost their position as the builders of God’s kingdom to others.

Philippians 4:6-9.  What is this yield, this produce that the owners look to receive at harvest time that is the holiness or righteousness of his people?  This epistle from Paul is the answer to that question.  People who live totally dependent upon God “have no anxiety at all” because they live in God’s strength and not their own weakness.  Secure in God’s strength there is no reason for worry.  One way or another he will supply for all.  “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Through prayer, God maintains lines of contact with his faithful.  Prayer is both listening and speaking.  Peaceful discernment of God’s Will is the essential heart of prayer.  What God has to say is infinitely more important than what we have to say.  Two helps that Paul gives us are: whatever is honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious are signs of God’s Will as is, secondly, whatever can be learned from all in life of St. Paul as from the lives of all the saints.  When we live in God’s Will, “Then the God of peace will be with you.”

26A20.    Ezekiel 18:25-28.  God is the only source of life; everything or everyone else apart from God can only produce death.  Iniquity or sin is a rejection of God as our source of life.  The fruit of sin is death that has no redemption.  What counts at the time of judgment is where our life is at the time of judgment.  If God finds us on the right road of the straight and narrow at the time of judgment, we are on our way to heaven.  On the other hand, all the past good we have done will not cancel out the present state of sin we are in.

Matthew 21:28-32.   Ezekiel’s reading parallels today’s parable.  Yesterday’s sin is wiped away by today’s change of heart.  However, today’s sin is not wiped away by yesterday’s goodness.  The ‘yes’ that the chief priests and elders said to God yesterday does not gain for them forgiveness for today’s rejection of Jesus.  On the other hand, the tax collectors and prostitutes who were sinners yesterday but today accept and follow Jesus are on their way to heaven.  The old saying is that we are sinners on our way to becoming saints; not saints, on our way to becoming sinners.  We can never become complacent on our way to heaven.  This world, the devil and some of our own natural tendencies can easily put us back on the wrong road.

Philippians 2:1-11.  “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory.”  Jesus said in Luke 9:23-24: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  Original sin, imbedded in human nature, calls us to grab everything for ourselves before others get it. That is life lived on the basis of the survival instinct, where all our lives are all about oneself and those one considers part of oneself.   Jesus demands that we live in him and he lives in us (John 14:4) or that we lose our grep on own lives so that we can live in his life-giving strength and will.  Paul says that Jesus emptied himself of living only in a divine state in heaven but humbled himself by taking on human nature.  His infinite love for us led him to become human so that he could sacrifice himself for the sake of our redemption.  “Because of this, God greatly exalted him” so that we may all declare that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  If God is everything for us, then we will have everything that is good and have it forever.