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Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) –

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (A)

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 1, 2023)

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 8, 2023)

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 15, 2023)

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 22, 2023)

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 29, 2023)

All Saints / All Souls (November 1 & 2, 2023)

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (November 5, 2023)

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (November 12, 2023)

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (November 19, 2023)

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (November 26, 2023)

October 1 /Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

JESUS HAS FINALLY ARRIVED IN JERUSALEM, where he predicted he will suffer and die. Now he has overtaken the temple area, the center of commercial, political, and religious life. Amid its crowd, he begins to spar with the chief priests and elders of the city.

To their questioning of his authority, Jesus says he’ll answer if they tell him where John the Baptist’s authority comes from. This puts his adversaries in a no-win situation with the public. If they say “from God,” they look foolish for not changing their ways; if they say “from humans,” they mock the crowd who reveres John. So they play dumb and refuse to answer, and that’s

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where today’s parable comes in. When Jesus asks them which son did the father’s will, their response inevitably indicts them before the crowd. The elders and chief priests want to be seen as obedient to God, but their lack of action to John’s call to repent reveals only their obstinance to change.

We might cheer Jesus’s victory and say good riddance to the stubborn elders. However, remember that both sons in the parable remain children of the father, and both will receive their inheritance. The parable is meant for us as well, calling us to change our minds when we have determined all too quickly who will and won’t be entering God’s reign with us.

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SM Seasonal Missalette WC/M

We Celebrate Hymnal Missal WS Word and Song

CEL/H ¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Hymnal CEL/M ¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal * = BILINGUAL

READINGS [136]

Ezekiel 18:25–28 Psalm 25:4–5, 6–7, 8–9 (Rx 6a) Philippians 2:1–11 or Philippians 2:1–5

21:28–32

Congregational Hymn and Song Selections from

Christ Is King (christus rex)

Text: Sylvia Dunstan / Music: Benjamin Brody

Christ Is King (irby)

Text: Sylvia Dunstan / Music: Henry J. Gauntlett

Text: Ruth Duck

You Seize No Sword (st. patrick’s breastplate)

Text: Adam M. L. Tice

Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

October 8 /Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

JESUS TURNS UP THE HEAT THIS week, recounting another parable to confront the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem. Because the lectionary pairs it with Isaiah’s song of the vineyard, we might think at first that the problem with the vineyard in the Gospel is the vineyard itself and its produce—God’s people being the vineyard and their works of faith its fruit. But in fact, in the Gospel, the vineyard and produce are just fine. The trouble is with the tenants—the chief priests and elders—responsible for tending the vineyard. They refuse to pay the share that rightfully belongs to the landowner, and they employ violence against the landowner’s servants and ultimately murder his son.

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Some will read this as a cautionary tale for those in leadership responsible for tending God’s vineyard. Others might read it as a warning to those who reject Jesus, the landowner’s son. Our understanding deepens, however, when we realize that in both Matthew’s and Mark’s versions, this parable also sets up the debate of paying taxes to Caesar and Jesus’s call to discern what belongs to God.

The tenants’ sin was believing they had a rightful claim to what was not theirs. But those who honor God recognize that all they have has been given by God, who seeks for its fruitful return by our obedience to God’s will. —DM

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October 15 /Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

THIS SUNDAY’S PARABLE OF THE WEDDING feast is a difficult one to preach. If we take the parable to be an allegory about God (the king) and who gets invited into God’s kingdom (the feast), we have to justify a God who would murder his own citizens, burn his own city, and react violently against improper attire. Nor must we interpret it as a supersessionist “replacement theology” of Christians displacing the Jewish people as God’s chosen ones. Equally problematic is using the fate of the unfortunate attendee with no wedding garment as a reason to berate or embarrass those who come to church with good intentions but different fashion sensibilities from our own. As a parable (and

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some scholars identify it as two distinct parables), this passage cannot be used to support violence against or superiority over another person or community.

Where we can be sure to reflect the good news of the Gospel for our assemblies is by fixing our attention on the king’s relentless generosity. Despite rejection, indifference, and even violent opposition, God wants to lavish upon “all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines” (Is 25:6). Even as everything around us is burning down, God’s persistent desire for us is to share not only in his feast but also in his joy. —DM

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Congregational Hymn and Song Selections from

At the Table All Are Equal (wilcox)

Text: David Bjorlin / Music: Benjamin Brody

God Is My Shepherd (peaceful waters)

Text: Chris Shelton / Music: M. Roger Holland II

God Is Waiting at the Table (jefferson)

Text: Adam M. L. Tice

The Lord Is My Own Shepherd (bred dina vida vingar)

Text: Jacque B. Jones

To the Wedding Feast God Calls Us (beach spring) D-803761

Text: Delores Dufner, OSB / Arr. Ronald A. Nelson

Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

October 22 /Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

THIS WEEK, THE PHARISEES AND THEIR own rivals, the Herodians, join forces to get Jesus to publicly implicate himself as anti-Roman, guaranteeing his arrest. However, Jesus leaves everyone amazed with his shrewd reply. Those who choose to engage in Caesar’s currencies of power are bound by Caesar’s laws, but those who live under God’s reign are obligated to follow God’s decrees.

Don’t let yourself be trapped into giving your assemblies a simple interpretation of Jesus’s response. As people of faith called to engage society and transform it, we cannot delineate so easily what belongs to one or the other. At times, following the

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laws of one requires us to break the laws of the other, and even Christians who strive above all to live under God’s laws disagree on how to do that within the civil laws under which they live. All things belong to God. Still, we must discern together how to live God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. To do this, we cannot be like the Pharisees and Herodians who desired only to be right and Jesus to be wrong. In conversations, discussions, and debates where we try to discern how to fulfill God’s laws and our obligations under a civil society, let us not seek to entrap the other but always strive to engage in the currency of God’s love.

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Text: Jacque B. Jones / Arr. Horace Clarence Boyer

Text and Music: Chris Shelton

Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

October 29 /Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

TODAY, JESUS REVEALS WHAT FAITHFULNESS TO God’s law looks like—complete and total love of God, neighbor, and self. Combining love of God (Dt 6:5) with love of one’s neighbor as oneself (Lv 19:18), Jesus provides a balanced, horizontal and vertical understanding of authentically lived faith that is both an interior state and an exterior expression. Remove any one part, and the structure falters.

Love for God whom we cannot see must be manifested in love of neighbor whom we do see. Love of neighbor, then, reflects how much God loves each of us, which in turn increases our love for God and flows into greater love for others. Neither

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self-serving nor self-deprecating, love is always a response to God who loves us first. Furthermore, this love engages heart, soul, and mind. That means it is nurtured by reason and intellect, inspired by instinct and emotion, and focused on life here and now and on the life to come.

We may be drawn more readily to one particular aspect of faith over another—to spirituality, to acts of justice or self-care, to the contemplative life or public service, to discernment directed by thought or led by feeling. Rather than being points of conflict, these differences show us how much we truly need one another if we are to encounter God’s love more fully in our lives.

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Text: David Bjorlin / Music: Randall Sensmeier

November 1, 2 /All Saints, All Souls

SO MUCH OF OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH is grounded in embracing death. In baptism we are plunged into fonts that often bear similarities to tombs. Saint days are typically marked not on a saint’s birthday but on the anniversary of his or her death, when they were born into eternal life. Cemeteries and crypts are still part of many parish grounds and churches, and within the walls and beneath the floors of many cathedrals are entombed beloved shepherds. In baptism, we die with Christ to rise with him to new life even as we await the fullness of eternal life to come.

The days around All Saints and All Souls give us an opportunity

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to highlight the many ways death is something not to be feared but embraced from the beginning of our Christian life. Some of the subtle but significant ways we do that is in how we reverence the body of the deceased in our funeral rites. Welcoming the body, we sprinkle it with holy water and clothe it with a pall to signify the person’s honored placed among the order of the baptized. We place on it a Bible and a cross and greet it with the lit Paschal candle, all signs of Christ first formally received at baptism. All throughout our daily lives, truly the baptized are already living life after death. —DM

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Congregational Hymn and Song Selections from

Blessed Are the Poor (galgani)

Text: Adam M. L. Tice / Music: Kate Williams

For the Faithful Who Have Answered

(omni dei, faithful)

Text: Sylvia Dunstan / Music: Swee Hong Lim

In the Rising and the Setting Sun (we know)

Text: Mary Louise Bringle / Music: Lee Dengler

D-U01184

O Blessed Are you Christ Jesus Said (erinleigh) D-U01112

Text: Mary Louise Bringle / Music: Zack Stachowski

Who Are These Like Stars Appearing

D-U01501

D-U01105

(zeuch mich zeuch mich, unser herrscher) D-803769

Text: Delores Dufner / Arr. William H. Monk

Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

November 5 /Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

A WISE BISHOP AND CANON LAWYER once told me that canon law is ultimately meant to be pastoral, and when it ceases to be pastoral, it is no longer law. He wasn’t advocating that we toss out the rules whenever they don’t suit us. Similar to Jesus’s critique in today’s Gospel, he was calling us to understand the broader purpose of the law and its implementation—namely, to show mercy for those on the margins and to secure justice for those oppressed. Law and its enforcement resulting in anything else no longer acts as law according to its purpose.

Jesus encourages his disciples to follow the teachings of the experts of the law, the scribes and Pharisees, but to condemn their practice of it, which is neither merciful nor just.

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He describes the hallmark of authoritative teaching, which is humility and transparency that redirects attention to the Father in heaven and not to oneself.

Since the days of Saint Paul, there have always been celebrities and compelling teachers of the faith. With social media and self-publishing, many more Catholic personalities today vie for our attention, and as leaders, we, too, hold some level of prominence in our communities. As those who desire to teach with true authority, may we instruct with both our words and actions to communicate and reveal God’s mercy for those in need. —DM

November 12 /Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN EARTHQUAKE country, the thought of “the big one” cannot consume our lives lest we live in constant fear. Similarly, I doubt today’s Gospel calls us to hypervigilance, leaving no room for peace, for wise and foolish virgins alike are found asleep at the bridegroom’s arrival. What, then, does it mean to stay awake with enough oil to light the bridegroom’s return?

Perhaps we are to embrace the long delay of God’s reign with unrelenting joy and hope instead of growing fear, despair, or indifference. I think of our Black sisters and brothers who for centuries have endured ongoing systemic injustice and still are some of our greatest witnesses to hope. In their long vigil for

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true equality, they have experienced earth-shaking public racial terror and violence and the daily tremors of discrimination that extinguish joy’s light. Yet their perseverance and persistence shine with abiding trust in God.

In his speech “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” No matter how long we must wait for the fullness of God’s reign, let us keep our lamps filled with the oil of gladness, trusting in the slow work of the Spirit, and joyful in Christ who is surely coming. —DM

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God Of Kindness and Compassion (tice) ............................D-U01200

Text: Jacque B. Jones / Music: Zack Stachowski What Is the World Like (new

Text: Adam M. L. Tice / Music: Sally Ann Morris

Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

November 19 /Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

DON’T BE TEMPTED TO GIVE A simplistic interpretation of today’s Gospel that sounds like a lesson in good investment practices or a lead-in to the annual stewardship appeal. Instead, think of today’s Gospel as part of a set that began last Sunday with the parable of the ten virgins and will conclude next Sunday with the parable of the sheep and the goats. These three passages make up the entirety of Matthew’s 25th chapter. The next chapter begins the narrative of Jesus’s final days and his death and resurrection.

In all three parables, we are called to discipleship grounded not in selfish fear but in fear of the Lord, that is, in wonder and awe at God’s goodness.

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In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, we were called to trust joyfully in Christ and not lose hope as we await the fullness of God’s reign. Today, we rejoice in the abundance of gifts each one of us has been given in Christ. Without fear of losing them, as in a flame divided but undimmed, we are invited to put them to use for the sake of others so that Christ may be glorified. Finally, next Sunday, when we honor Christ the King, we will see what awaits those who, like Jesus, fearlessly give of themselves completely for those most in need. —DM

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November 26 /Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

“LORD, WHEN DID WE SEE YOU?” ask the sheep and goats in today’s final parable of Matthew’s Gospel on this last Sunday of the liturgical year. There’s a tone of surprise in it, as if neither sheep nor goat knew they had had a close encounter with their king before that final judgment day.

We put so much attention on the different outcomes of that same question that we might overlook one thing. The dividing line is not first and foremost between sheep and goats but between the entire herd (all of us) and Jesus, who has been standing with and in place of his least ones all along.

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At any given moment, Jesus waits for me to cross the line I have drawn that separates me and my concerns from the needs of the very person before me. Whether I cross that line or not in that instant, I will not know that was Christ until the day the king answers the question, “Lord, when did we see you?”

Some days, by God’s grace, we find the courage to draw close to the one we would have passed by, seeing in them our Lord and king. Yet the invitation to God’s reign is not given to those who recognized the king and acted but to those who showed mercy wherever mercy was needed most. —DM