Master·evangeli.net
Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him...
The Church: the ministerial priesthood and the Hierarchy
Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench (Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)Today, we remember Christ as praying all night before choosing —from his disciples— the twelve Apostles. They —who never cease to be the people of God— will have a "mission within the mission" of the Church: to nurture, to encourage and to sustain the sanctity of all the faithful.
Some are called by God to the "ministerial priesthood": they are the "ordained faithful". A power has been bestowed upon them; but this is a "sacred power" to dispense the Bread and to preach the Word: a power to serve. They form the "Hierarchy", something which today sounds bad because it is seen with worldly eyes. In the Church the hierarchical element is not a privileged "status" but a "functional element", whose radical aim is to serve our brothers. "Ministry" exactly means service. The Pope’s title, precisely, is "The Servant of the Servants of God".
—O Jesus, we request from You pastors with a heart like Yours. You, Who came not to be served but to serve.
September 1st
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Gospel and commentary video
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