Encountering Christ in His Mysteries
Brief Reflections on Lectionary Readings for the 7th Sunday In Ordinary Times
After a first attempt last Sunday, I will again today offer some brief reflections on the readings from the lectionary for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2025. Hopefully, I can adjust my schedule so I publish such reflections at least a day before their scheduled mass.
As implied in my first iteration last week, my approach to the Liturgy of the Word is borrowed from a holy priest mentor and biblical scholar Fr. Francis Martin, who was widely esteemed for his teaching, preaching, apostolic zeal, spiritual direction, and gift for friendship. For his preaching, Fr. Francis who drew upon his time in monastic life and the insights of the esteemed Benedictine spiritual writer Blessed Don Columba Marmion, OSB (1858-1923).
The title of Marmion’s influential book, Christ in His Mysteries, captures the basic idea. This key insight is that the Church’s liturgy of Word and Sacrament helps us to encounter—in each celebration—Jesus Christ in the efficacious mysteries of his life, including his mighty deeds and saving words. These mysteries are efficacious in the sense that they mediate particular graces that enable us to enter more deeply into our sharing in his life and saving work.
In these brief Sunday reflections, I aspire primarily to highlight some key insights from the lectionary readings that might help us to enter into what the Pauline tradition calls the “mystery of Christ.” This language is a Christocentric way of referring to God’s whole plan of salvation, including the way that plan involves the participation of believers as “members of the body of Christ,” through whom Christ’s redemptive work is continued in the drama of human history. Through my brief reflections on these readings with an eye to the signs of the times, I hope to provide insights into how we might—as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council emphasize in their call for a renewal of moral theology, live out our high calling in Christ to bear the fruit of charity for the life of the world (Optatam totius, no.16.4). I do so also with attention to the vocation of the laity to inform the world with the spirit of the gospel.
Entrance Antiphon: Ps 13:(12):6
The entrance antiphon for today’s liturgy reads as follows:
O Lord, I trust in your merciful love. My heart will rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord who has been bountiful with me.
This antiphon highlights one of the most fundamental aspects of God’s very being and relation to us, namely the merciful love that is manifest in God’s saving works in history. This antiphon opens our liturgical celebration by reminding us that Christianity is fundamentally a way of entering into the mystery of Trinitarian love, and making it present in the world. Although studying and prayerfully contemplating this mystery follows naturally from Christian faith, entering into this mystery is much less an intellectual exercise than a matter of loving service, as is clear from the communion antiphon. It reads:
I give you a new commandment, says the Lord: love one another as I have loved you.
Reading I: 1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23
Our Old Testament reading for today illustrates how David, a man after God’s own heart, shows mercy to King Saul who has been seeking to kill him. It reads as follows:
In those days, Saul went down to the desert of Ziph with three thousand picked men of Israel, to search for David in the desert of Ziph. So David and Abishai went among Saul’s soldiers by night and found Saul lying asleep within the barricade, with his spear thrust into the ground at his head and Abner and his men sleeping around him.
Abishai whispered to David: “God has delivered your enemy into your grasp this day. Let me nail him to the ground with one thrust of the spear; I will not need a second thrust!” But David said to Abishai, “Do not harm him, for who can lay hands on the LORD’s anointed and remain unpunished?”
So David took the spear and the water jug from their place at Saul’s head,
and they got away without anyone’s seeing or knowing or awakening. All remained asleep, because the LORD had put them into a deep slumber.
Going across to an opposite slope, David stood on a remote hilltop at a great distance from Abner, son of Ner, and the troops. He said: “Here is the king’s spear. Let an attendant come over to get it. The LORD will reward each man for his justice and faithfulness. Today, though the LORD delivered you into my grasp, I would not harm the LORD’s anointed.”
Even though David’s irascible passions would have been engaged by being chased by Saul and his three thousand soldiers, which would incline him to attack, David exemplifies his fundamental trust in God by both respecting that Saul has been anointed by God, and by having mercy upon him. David also illustrates his trust in God’s loving kindness by expressing his confidence that “The LORD will reward each man for his justice and faithfulness.”
The Responsorial Psalm (103: 1-4, 8, 10, 12-13) invites the Church to enter into a song of praise for the Lord’s kindness and mercy.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
David’s faithful imitation of God is evident in this Psalm, under whose patronage it is published. The second reading seems enigmatic, but becomes more clear when we remember Paul’s anthropology of the image of God, which I discussed last week.
Reading II 1 Corinthians 15:45-49
Brothers and sisters: It is written, The first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But the spiritual was not first; rather the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven. As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly, and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.
As I noted in last week’s post and will frequently reiterate, Pauline references to Adam and the image of God are reflections of a broader anthropology and soteriology. Within this Pauline theology, Christ is the perfect image of God, Adam the fallen image, and the human person is born fallen “in Adam” but then redeemed “in Christ.” In this theological context, the Christian life is one in which we are—or should be—undergoing a continual renewal by the Spirit of Christ, who conforms us to his image which enables a participation in the pattern of his life. The liturgical spirituality of Don Marmion, which centered in encountering Christ in his mysteries, aligns perfectly with this Pauline mysticism of sharing in the mystery of Christ. This Pauline theology and Don Marmion’s appropriation of it provide a rich context for thinking about how the words and events of Christ’s life, as narrated in the Gospels, relate to the lives of contemporary believers.
Our gospel reading is a continuation of the Lukan account of Our Lord’s Sermon on the Plain. As I emphasized last week, this key text needs to be understood within the context of Luke’s Gospel, which was written to proclaim the good news and consolation to an audience of gentile Christians, many of whom were downtrodden. His proclamation of the inbreaking “kingdom of God” (the realm where God’s rule is operative) emphasized, therefore, that God’s reign entailed a reversal of fortunes for the lowly. Although the Church recalls this reversal daily by including Mary’s Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) in her evening prayer, Catholics can easily become numb to the message that God’s rule ultimately—although often not in the way or at the time we might hope—”casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.” This is why Jesus’s inaugural sermon (Lk 4:16-21) cites the Prophet Isaiah that:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Today’s excerpt from Gospel according to Luke is from 6:27-38, where I have bolded what are seen as the two central teachings, namely love of enemies and withholding judgment of others. As Pope Francis struggles in critical condition, we should keep him in prayer as he is very much influenced by Luke’s Gospel of good news to the poor and reversal of fortune between the mighty and lowly. Pope Francis’s controversial warnings against judgment, moreover, are best understood as reflecting one of the basic teachings of Jesus, which should alert us to the contrary mindset of the Pope’s vociferous American critics.
The text from Luke follows:
Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
“Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”
This excerpt highlights what noted biblical scholar Frank Matera describes as a central theme of Sermon on the Plain, namely the love of enemies (6:27-8). Because of its prominent place in the Sermon, this “hard saying” of Jesus is central to subsequent accounts of Christian ethics, even if the theological tradition will struggle to explain how we might live it out. Matera describes how Luke develops this teaching through the three imperatives that follow in the text, namely doing good to those who hate you, blessing those who curse you, and praying for those who mistreat you. This love of enemies is further illustrated through three examples of when someone strikes you, takes your coat, or asks for money (6:29). This love of enemies conforms to the golden rule of doing to others as we would have them do for us. The Lukan Jesus follows with two clarifying examples: doing good to the enemy and lending without expecting return.
This leaves us with Jesus’s warning against judging others. To conclude these reflections on today’s readings, let me suggest that we scrutinize—in light this warning—the recent decades of Catholic participation in the American political process centered on contested moral issues. More specifically, I suggest we reconsider this approach in light of both the renewal of moral theology called for by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, and Catholic Social Doctrine. The former prioritizes not fighting against the perhaps gravely immoral acts of others, but grounding Christian morality in Scripture, pointing us to our high calling in Christ, and prioritizing our obligation to bear the fruit of charity for the life of the world. The integral and solidary humanism of the latter would have us enter into dialogue and collaboration with our neighbors in a spirit of social friendship, including with the oppressed crying out to God for a reversal against their oppressors.
What would Jesus do?