Year C
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
Ecclesiastes 1:2;2:21-23
The first chapter of Ecclesiastes considers the spectrum of human nature, with all of its limitations and vulnerabilities, and offers warnings relating to all human activity undertaken while living in the world.
While this text may appear pessimistic and degrading of human effort, its power and influence is as important today as when it was first written. Therefore, its message suggests that while all things are impermanent, the value of human giftedness can only flourish when all things are considered as a gift from God.
The human effort therefore, has the background context of God’s creation and the fruitfulness of human labour in that context.
This passage asks the question about our priorities and emphasises that labour, and the value of work cannot be productive when ‘grasping’ and ‘acquisition’ are uppermost in human striving.
All that is worked for must consider, not selfish ends, but the well being of all - a moving away from self, with focus on the universal good, such as the distribution of food to the poor and environmental integrity.
Colossians 3:1-5.9-11
In the letter to the Colossians, Paul’s theme considers “the true knowledge” that is essential to human effort and its applications; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus supplies the key to all human functioning and aspirations, “because the life you are now living is based upon a consciousness of Christ in all things”. When this becomes our top priority and concern, our endeavour and work will bear fruit. And so “when Christ is revealed - and he is your life - you too will be revealed in all your glory with him.
Luke 12:13-21
Jesus takes up these themes in Mark’s gospel and attentiveness, right vision, and understanding enhances the observations and comments in the first two readings - “watch and be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for a man’s life is not made secure by what he owns, even when he has more than he needs”. Jesus illustrates this message with a parable, life is unpredictable, and being so, the priorities of creation and human endeavour must reflect the intentions of God the creator - the capacity to ‘let go’ of all things in order to find eternal life.
Today, we are well into the season of Green (Ordinary time) Sundays. Perhaps it is time to explore Eucharistic Prayer 4, since its use is precluded in Advent, Christmastide, Lent, Eastertide and the “White” Sundays following Pentecost. Similarly, it might be appropriate on a given Sunday to offer one of the Eucharistic Prayers for Various Needs and Occasions (I can’t find any rubric that explicitly says one may not). Each of these Eucharistic Prayers is a rich trove of narrative theology and well worth study and contemplation.
Perhaps short sections of Eucharistic Prayer 4 might be put in the parish newsletter over several weeks to help us engage more with its impressive sweep of salvation history?
Note on the first reading: Do you think “Vanity” is perhaps more clearly understood as “in vain” rather than “vain”?
The hymn choices have been taken from the Laudate hymnbook:
Come down O love divine 303
Be thou my vision 970
Here I am, Lord 865
O Lord, all the world belongs to you 847
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
