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Contemplating today's Gospel

Today's Gospel + homily (in 300 words)

View saints: Memorial of Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Wednesday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
View 1st Reading and Psalm
1st Reading (Job 9:1-12.14-16): Job answered his friends and said: I know well that it is so; but how can a man be justified before God? Should one wish to contend with him, he could not answer him once in a thousand times. God is wise in heart and mighty in strength; who has withstood him and remained unscathed? He removes the mountains before they know it; he overturns them in his anger. He shakes the earth out of its place, and the pillars beneath it tremble. He commands the sun, and it rises not; he seals up the stars. He alone stretches out the heavens and treads upon the crests of the sea. He made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south; he does great things past finding out, marvelous things beyond reckoning. Should he come near me, I see him not; should he pass by, I am not aware of him; should he seize me forcibly, who can say him nay? Who can say to him, ‘What are you doing?’. How much less shall I give him any answer, or choose out arguments against him! Even though I were right, I could not answer him, but should rather beg for what was due me. If I appealed to him and he answered my call, I could not believe that he would hearken to my words.
Responsorial Psalm: 87
R/. Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
Daily I call upon you, o Lord; to you I stretch out my hands. Will you work wonders for the dead? Will the shades arise to give you thanks?

Do they declare your mercy in the grave, your faithfulness among those who have perished? Are your wonders made known in the darkness, or your justice in the land of oblivion?

But I, o Lord, cry out to you; with my morning prayer I wait upon you. Why, o Lord, do you reject me; why hide from me your face?
Versicle before the Gospel (Phil 3:8-9): Alleluia. I consider all things so much rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Alleluia.
Gospel text (Lk 9:57-62): As Jesus and his disciples were proceeding on their journey, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus answered him, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." And to another he said, "Follow me." But he replied, "Lord, let me go first and bury my father." But he answered him, "Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God." And another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home." Jesus answered him, "No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.

“Follow me”

Fr. Lluc TORCAL Monk of Santa Maria de Poblet (Santa Maria de Poblet, Tarragona, Spain)

Today, the Gospel invites us to mull over the central point of our faith, in a clear and persistent way: the radical following of Jesus. “I will follow you wherever you go” (Lk 9:57). How easily can one suggest something that may completely change a person's life!: “Follow me” (Lk 9:59). Our Lord's words allow no excuses, delays, conditions or betrayals...

Christian life demands this radical following of Jesus. Radical, not only because it must be guided, all the way, by the Gospel (hence, to the last days of our life), but, mostly, because all their aspects, from the most extraordinary to the most ordinary ones, want to be and must be the manifestation of the Spirit of Jesus Christ inspiring us. In fact, since the day of our Baptism, our life is no longer that of just any person: we carry with us, in our body, the life of Christ! Because of the Holy Spirit instilled in our hearts, it is no longer we who live, but Jesus Christ who lives within us. This is what the Christian life is like, because it is Christ’s full life, because it exudes Christ from His deepest roots: this is the life we are called to live.

When the Lord came into this world, “all mankind had its place, but He did not have one: He had nowhere to go amongst men (...), but to the barn, amongst the beasts, the animals, and the more innocent and unassuming people. This is why He says: ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (St Jerome). The Lord will find His place amongst us, if we, as John the Baptist did, let Him grow while we lessen, that is, if we let Him grow, who already lives inside us, while being ductile and obedient to His Spirit, the source of all humility and innocence.

Thoughts on Today's Gospel

  • “The consent to grace depends much more on grace than on the will, while the resistance to grace depends upon the will only. So sweet is God's hand.” (Saint Francis de Sales)

  • “God imparts unto us the motion of its power without hindering that of our will by adjusting his power to his sweetness and the freedom of our will.” (Benedict XVI)

  • “Man's vocation to eternal life does not suppress, but actually reinforces, his duty to put into action in this world the energies and means received from the Creator to serve justice and peace.” (Catechism Of The Catholic Church, Nº 2820)

November 17th
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Gospel and commentary video