XXXIIth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Massimo Palombella
In today’s Gospel (Lk 20:27-38) Jesus, responding to the Sadducees, returns once again to our relationship with God. In fact, by affirming that “God is not of the dead, but of the living; for all live for him” he challenges each of us about the kind of relationship we have with God and, more profoundly, about the real existence of the God in whom we say we believe.
A God who does not healthily challenge my life, who does not lead me ‘beyond’, who does not spur me on to be a better person, who does not lead me to accept myself, to love myself, to have a real image of myself, who does not lead me to realise that there is something outside of my world… this God fundamentally does not exist. He is an invention of mine to illude myself that I am well, or a useless legacy of an education received.
The true God asks me for a relationship, a relationship of trust, a giving of self to be more and more a ‘living’ person, capable of living in reality, able to make those necessary separations that only allow me to personalise life, to live in truth, to taste ‘life in abundance’.
The Communion antiphon of today’s celebration is taken from Psalm 22 (Ps 22, 1. 2) with the following text:
“Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi deerit;
in loco pascuæ ibi me collocavit, super aquam refectionis educavit me”.
(The Lord is my shepherd and I shall want nothing;
he has set me in a land of abundant pastures; he has led me to life-renewing waters).
The attached music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The live performance is by the Choir of the “Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame”(Indiana) on 8 November 2015.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
