Oct-10 Liturgical Study Twenty-eighth Sunday

 

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary time

Wisdom 7:7-11

Wisdom is the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. Pray for wisdom from God, gift of the Holy Spirit, which lasts longer than any worldly treasures.

Psalm 90

Psalm 90 is the only psalm in the psalter recited as a prayer by Moses, the Hebrew in the superscription literally reads “a prayer to Moses, man of God,” on behalf of the people in response to the crisis of exile. It is striking that the pleas to God have an urgency time wise because Moses himself ran out of time, he died before entering the promised land. Reminding us that our human lives are all too fragile and short. For the psalmist, the recognition of human finitude and fallibility is not finally cause for despair, but rather an occasion for prayer. 

Hebrew 4:12-13

This reading exhorts those who have received God’s promises in Christ, to persevere in faithful obedience and not make the same mistake that the Exodus generation did. Those who do not continue to live responsively to God’s word throughout their lives will encounter its piercing sentence on the day of judgment—the day on which all will give account to God. 

Mark 10:17-31

What does it profit a man who gains the whole world but forfeits of his soul (Mk 8:34-38). Jesus does not tell the man merely to separate himself from his possessions, to burn them or to walk away from them. He goes a step further by instructing him to redistribute his wealth among the poor. Jesus calls for more than a change in the man’s bottom line and more than a permanent relinquishment of his acquisitions; he tells him to change his relationship to the poor–to help them, to identify with them. But the person asking the question is not being honest in his dedication to God's rule so he resists surrendering not only wealth, but also status and power. He resists participating in economic justice and handing power over to his poor beneficiaries. The financial, social, and political costs are too great.