31/08/2023
*DAILY MASS READINGS*
*Thursday 31 August 2023*
*Thursday of week 21 in Ordinary Time*
*Liturgical Colour: Green. Year: A(I).*
*Readings at Mass*
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*First reading*
1 Thessalonians 3:7-13 ·
Now we can breathe again, as you are still holding firm in the Lord
Brothers, your faith has been a great comfort to us in the middle of our own troubles and sorrows; now we can breathe again, as you are still holding firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel before our God on your account? We are earnestly praying night and day to be able to see you face to face again and make up any shortcomings in your faith.
May God our Father himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ, make it easy for us to come to you. May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and the whole human race as much as we love you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus Christ comes with all his saints.
*Commentary*
Paul is reacting with pleasure, gratitude and joy to the good report of the Thessalonian Christians which Timothy has brought to him. At the same time, he is obviously also a little nervous that they are insufficiently instructed in the faith, since he is so eager to return to ‘make up any shortcomings’. He moved round the Eastern Mediterranean at extraordinary speed, staying for a long period only at his two centres, Ephesus and Corinth. His little communities everywhere must sorely have needed his guidance as they thought through the staggering new truths he had taught them. As we repeatedly think through the rich truths of Christianity we can rely on the long tradition of the Church for guidance; they could rely only on their perception of the guidance of the Spirit, and – as the Letters of John show – they did not always get it right!
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*Responsorial Psalm*
Psalm 89(90):3-4,12-14,17
Fill us with your love that we may rejoice.
You turn men back to dust
and say: ‘Go back, sons of men.’
To your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday, come and gone,
no more than a watch in the night.
Fill us with your love that we may rejoice.
Make us know the shortness of our life
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Lord, relent! Is your anger for ever?
Show pity to your servants.
Fill us with your love that we may rejoice.
In the morning, fill us with your love;
we shall exult and rejoice all our days.
Let the favour of the Lord be upon us:
give success to the work of our hands.
Fill us with your love that we may rejoice.
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*Gospel Acclamation*
Jn15:15
Alleluia, alleluia!
I call you friends, says the Lord,
because I have made known to you
everything I have learnt from my Father.
Alleluia!
Or:
Mt24:42,44
Alleluia, alleluia!
Stay awake and stand ready,
because you do not know the hour
when the Son of Man is coming.
Alleluia!
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*Gospel*
Matthew 24:42-51
He is coming at an hour you do not expect
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. You may be quite sure of this, that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed anyone to break through the wall of his house. Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
‘What sort of servant, then, is faithful and wise enough for the master to place him over his household to give them their food at the proper time? Happy that servant if his master’s arrival finds him at this employment. I tell you solemnly, he will place him over everything he owns. But as for the dishonest servant who says to himself, “My master is taking his time,” and sets about beating his fellow servants and eating and drinking with drunkards, his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. The master will cut him off and send him to the same fate as the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.’
*Commentary*
Matthew is approaching the end of his fifth and last of the great discourses on the Kingdom of Heaven (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 24-25), this one being on the future of the Church. He takes over the final paragraph of Mark’s discourse on the Coming of the Son of Man, and illustrates each element of Mark 13.33-37 with a parable. The key-note, which opens today’s reading, is ‘Stay awake’ or ‘Be alert’ – but alert to what?
It is clear from the letters of Paul, especially such passages as 1 Thessalonians 4.37-5.7 and 1 Corinthians 7.25-35, that the first generation of Christians had a vivid awareness of the imminence of the Day of the Lord, the cataclysm which would happen and bring to an end with the Judgment of God the world as they knew it. As time passed and this did not happen, such expectancy began to wane. So 2 Peter 3.1-10 explains that you can’t link human and divine time-scales: ‘with the Lord a day is like a thousand years’. Both positions were wrong in their timing, but not in their teaching.
Will it ever happen? Will the time come when the ever-expanding universe implodes? Leave this problem to the astro-physicists! In one sense the Day of the Lord has already come, in that with the Death and Resurrection of Christ the world as the ancients knew it has changed for ever: the triumph of Evil has passed and triumphant hope has been born. In another sense. for each one of us the Day of the Lord is imminent, in that with every moment we are forming ourselves, and the Lord is forming us, in a way which will become startlingly and devastatingly clear at the confrontation with Truth at our death. We cannot afford to neglect the warning, ‘Be alert!’
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