Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time/C
Massimo Palombella
In today’s Gospel (Lk 12:32-48) Jesus states that “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. In his simplicity and essentiality, in a form typical of the Hebrew language, Jesus questions us about the true motivations of our actions, beyond all our intelligent justifications. In fact, there are deep-rooted motivations for our actions, traceable in our history, in our ancestral relationships that guide our small and big decisions. Our need to be recognised, to be loved, to adapt to a model implicitly communicated to us, our need for a father, a mother, security, all of this may represent, after all, the real driving motivation behind our actions. In all this, we are quite capable, by virtue of the education we have received, of masking our actions with ‘righteous intentions’, sometimes even making them coincide with the ‘will of God’. The Lord, the true God, makes himself present in our lives precisely through our true motivations, those of which, perhaps, we are a little ashamed. He draws us to Himself through our true needs to slowly lead us to really know ourselves and transform into resources that which could ruin our lives. True relationship with the Lord slowly purifies our intentions, humanizes our impulses, our needs, educates our desire by outlining more and more the contours of the true “treasure” where, for our true good, our heart must be.
The Gradual for today’s celebration is taken from Psalm 32 (Ps 32:12, 6) with the following text:
Beata gens cuius est Dominus Deus eorum:
populus quem elegit Dominus in hereditatem sibi.
Verbo Domini caeli firmati sunt:
et spiritu oris ejus omins virtus eorum.
(Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord;
the people whom he has chosen as his inheritance.
By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were established,
and all the power therein by the Spirit of his mouth).
The music attached, in Gregorian chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. Interpretation: Choralschola der Wiener Hofburgkapelle conducted by Hubert Dopf. The music track can be found on the CD “Gregorian Chant for the Church Year” published by Universal International Music B.V. in 1991.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
