Twenty Fifth Sunday In Ordinary
Time – Year A
Citations
of
Is
55,6-9: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9ajjijbw.htm
Ph
1,20c-24.27a: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9a43vqa.htm
Mt
20,1-16a: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9abul4t.htm
‘Seek the Lord while He may be found, call
upon Him while He is near.’ (Is 55:6)
With these words of Scripture the Prophet Isaiah urges his
contemporaries, and every one of us, to never stop searching for the Lord, to
yearn for Him and to especially recognise the Lord’s presence ‘while he is near’. God’s proximity to mankind is firstly shown through
the Alliance that He wanted to make with man through the People of Israel that
reached its fulfilment in the extraordinary, unexpected Mystery of the
Incarnation of the Word. The Father has
sent us His Son to show us His Love and His infinite Mercy.
‘For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’
(Is 55:9) The fact that God became man
is far beyond man’s wildest imagination and his capacity to comprehend!
The
presence of the Saviour who died and rose again, persists in time through the
extraordinary Mystery of the Church. The
Church is the Body of the Risen Christ and, united to the Head, it continues
His work of Salvation in the world.
The
Lord, ‘may be found’ today in the
Church: in His Word that is proclaimed in the liturgical assembly, in the
living body of the baptised, in the living guidance of the ordained and
especially in the Holy Eucharist, in which the human – divine Presence of the
Risen Christ remains in our midst and continually gives Himself to us. We are immersed in the Mystery of Christ’s
presence!
From
the supremacy of God and the Eucharist
springs every blessing for the Church and society. The Eucharist is the Truth from which every other truth about man
and the world flows.
In
front of this extraordinary Mystery, the voice of the prophet resonates: ‘let
the wicked forsake His way, and the
unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord, that he may have
mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon’ (Is 55:7) Mercifulness is the great sign of God’s
permanent closeness to man. God has
made a radical choice to stay permanently on man’s side against evil, sin and
Satan! From this perspective of looking
at Christ, the Church and the Sacraments of our Salvation, in particular the
Eucharist, we find that the Lord is ‘near’
to us.
He
who experiences God’s closeness by meeting Christ in the Church or through the
Sacraments can say with St Paul, ‘For to
me life is Christ, and death is gain.’ (Phil 1:21)
‘For to me life is Christ’ means that we can recognise that
our very existence consists of Him, the Crucified, Risen Lord.
Let
us ask the intersession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who’s feast we have
celebrated this week as Our Lady of Sorrows, to accompany us as she accompanied
her Son to ever more perfectly fulfil God’s Will in our lives. We ask Our Lady to intercede so that in this
earthly life we may always act in a ‘way
worthy of the gospel of Christ’ (Phil 1:27) and to be able to rejoice
because, ‘The LORD is good to all and his
compassion is over all that He has made’ (Ps 144:9).