Year A
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
The collect for the fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time gives expression to one of the great paradoxes of our Christian faith. It begins, “O God, who in the abasement of your Son, have raised a fallen world.” The abasement, the humiliation, the descent of the Son is, paradoxically, the glorification, the exaltation, the ascent of all that God has made.
In the abasement of Jesus we can perceive his incarnation, his taking flesh from his mother Mary, but, above all, his voluntary passion and death on the cross. He has identified himself with our fallen human condition and with all we suffer in this present life.
Jesus's identification with the world transforms it. From the time of the primordial sin our race had produced no fruit worthy of God; “all blasted, all wasted”. But with Jesus, the tree so near to being cursed, cut down, burnt with fire, produced a fruit of a quite marvellous quality. All at once, Adam's race became a thing of wonder in God's sight.
We must make this mystery our own. The collect concludes, “Fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin you bestow eternal gladness.” When we are identified with Jesus who has identified with us we cease to be slaves of sin. As newly grafted slips we draw sap from a vigorous stem, and are filled with joy. What was a paradox becomes a luminous truth.
Liturgical Situation:
Summer Ordinary Time, with many parishes perhaps losing people temporarily for holidays, maybe a simpler style of liturgy.
NB this might be a good time to (learn and) use the Kyrie, Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation and Agnus Dei music in the Missal. It is based on the Plainsong Mass 18 and is versatile: good with a big congregation and organ, but equally good with a smaller group, and unaccompanied.
Liturgical Keynote:
The mercy and love of our heavenly Father. From the first words of the Entrance Antiphon: Your merciful love, O God, we have received in the midst of your temple ... We might think of 'temple’ not in the sense of a building, but in the whole creation which is God’s Temple. Creation is itself an expression of mercy, which is why God’s praise reaches the ends of the earth.
The Collect speaks of the ‘abasement’ of the Son of God. The Latin is ‘humilitate’ which might better be interpreted here as ‘humbling’ or ‘humiliation’ because it is in contrast with the next phrase, that God has: raised up a fallen world. It is another reminder of St. Paul’s seminal text in Phil. 2:6-11: Christ was humbler yet, even to accepting death on a cross.
God’s compassion, expressed above all in the Sacrifice of Christ, enables us day by day to be recreated in the new life of Jesus. The Prayer over the Offerings focuses on the moment we present the gifts of bread and wine and offerings for the poor, which God will transform into Christ’s self offering.
A good choice of Preface for Mass today might be Preface for Sundays of the Year 6.
These hymns have been picked and chosen from different sources.
All ye who seek a comfort sure (CFE31, L212, LHON127, TCH133)
Come to me, all who labour (CFE134, LHON233)
Come to me, O weary traveller (L791)
I heard the voice the voice of Jesus say (L795)
Key
CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone
L – Laudate
LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)
TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
