Year B
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.
Recently, talking with someone they told me that their greatest fear is that someday they will be found out.
“What do you mean?” I said. “That they will know I’m not who I say I am; that I’m not who I want them to think I am; that I’m not who I want to be. I’m living a lie,” he answered.
Beneath his fear he knows there are cracks in his house.
From the beginning of his ministry, as told by St. Mark, Jesus has been dealing with divided houses and kingdoms. People living with inner conflict and turmoil.
That battle and interior conflict has been around since Adam and Eve separated themselves from God and hid amongst the trees of the garden.
This division and inner conflict is a reality of today’s world and our lives. We all know what it is like to live divided lives. You know those times when your outsides and your insides don’t match up?
That’s what it means to be a house divided. You’re one person at work another at home.
You act one way with certain people and a different way with other people. Life gets divided into pieces.
Behaviour, beliefs, and ethics become situational.
There is the work life, the family life, the prayer life, the personal life, the social life.
Pretty soon we’re left with an array of pieces.
It seems that we are forever trying to put the pieces of our lives together.
That’s why the crowd has gathered around Jesus. That’s why the religious authorities oppose him. That’s why his family tries to restrain him.
In their own way each is trying to put the pieces of their life together but it’s not working.
They won’t fit. They have been found out.
Their life and their world are neither what they thought they were nor what Jesus knows they could be. One reality has fallen, and a new one is ready to rise.
Jesus always stands before us as the image of unity, wholeness, integration. He is the stronger one.
He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He puts our lives and houses back in order.
Jesus offers a different image of what life might look like. He does so by revealing the division in our lives, the houses that cannot stand, and the crumbling of our kingdoms.
Even when it is for our own good, with the offer of new life and intended for wholeness, that’s a hard place to be. It means that one way or another change of some sort is coming.
Most of us don’t like that. It can be frightening.
“He has gone out of his mind,” the people say. The religious authorities accuse him of allegiance to Beelzebul, the ruler of demons. They project onto Jesus their own interior conflict and division.
Their accusations are a way of avoiding themselves.
It’s hard to look at the division and inner conflict within our lives.
The beginning of wholeness, however, is acknowledging our brokenness.
Where is our own house divided?
How and to what extent have we created conflict and division within our relationships?
In what ways do we live fragmented lives, parcelling out pieces here and there?
What is it that shatters your life? Anger and resentment, greed, insecurity, perfectionism, sorrow and loss. Infidelity. Fear. Envy. Guilt. Loneliness.
There are all sorts of forces, things, events, sometimes even people by which our lives are broken and through which we are separated from God, others, and ourself. Christ is stronger than anything that fragments our lives. He binds the forces that divide; he heals the wounds that separate; and He refashions pieces into a new whole. There is nothing about your life or my life that cannot be put back together by the love God in Christ.
Believe in that!
Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
CCC 410-412: the Protoevangelium
CCC 374-379: man in paradise
CCC 385-409: the fall
CCC 517, 550: Christ as exorcist
Often in our celebrations there seems to be a fear of silence. There are several places in the New Order of Mass where silence is prescribed but often this seems to be no more than a pause while the place is found in the book. One of the difficulties of silence during our celebrations is that the people are not sure what to do with it or how long it will last.
A good example of this is at the beginning of the Mass when the people are invited to ‘acknowledge their sins’. Given the Gospel reading for today the invitation might be extended with the words ‘During this past week how often have I thought of those who are my brothers and sisters in this community and how much am I truly concerned for them?’
In the case of both the Collect Prayer and the Prayer after Communion the rubrics ask that silence be observed after the invitation to prayer ‘Let us pray’. It is helpful at that point to suggest for what prayer might be offered by indicating what the prayer will be about.
So in the case of today’s Collect Prayer one might say:
‘Let us pray in these moments of silence that God, in his goodness, will help us see what we ought to do and give us the strength to do it’.
Similarly for the prayer after Communion one might say:
Let us pray for a few moments that strengthened by the holy gifts we have shared we may try to choose always to do what we know to be right and good’.
A pause for reflection after the homily is very helpful and it is good if the homily can end on a challenging note which gives the people something upon which to reflect.
The silence after Communion is a time for more private prayer and should not be the time for the washing of the vessels which can be a distraction for the people and which is much better left until after the Mass with the vessels placed on a side table. The Mass is a sacred meal and no host would dream of doing the washing up while the guests are still at table!
These hymns have been chosen from various sources:
Diverse in culture, nation, race (L841)
Forgive our sins, as we forgive (CFE182, L845)
Brother, sister, let me serve you (LHON186)
One bread, one body (CFE578, L832, LHON538)
Will you let me be your servant (The Servant Song) (CFE813, L924)
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.
