Liturgy Alive, Models of Celebrations

2 Kgs 17:5– 8, 13 –15a, 18; Ps 60:3, 4 – 5, 12–13; Mt 7:1– 5

Daily Gospel

First Reading: 2 Kgs 17:5– 8, 13 –15a, 18

Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, occupied the whole land and
attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years. In the
ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel the king of Assyria took
Samaria, and deported the children of Israel to Assyria, setting
them in Halah, at the Habor, a river of Gozan, and the cities of
the Medes.

This came about because the children of Israel sinned against
the LORD, their God, who had brought them up from the land
of Egypt, from under the domination of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and because they venerated other gods. They followed the rites
of the nations whom the LORD had cleared out of the way of
the children of Israel and the kings of Israel whom they set up.
And though the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every
prophet and seer, “Give up your evil ways and keep my
commandments and statutes, in accordance with the entire law
which I enjoined on your fathers and which I sent you by my
servants the prophets,” they did not listen, but were as stiffnecked
as their fathers, who had not believed in the LORD, their
God. They rejected his statutes, the covenant which he had
made with their fathers, and the warnings which he had given
them, till, in his great anger against Israel, the LORD put them
away out of his sight. Only the tribe of Judah was left.

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 60:3, 4 – 5, 12–13

R./ Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

O God, you have rejected us and broken our defenses;
you have been angry; rally us!
R./ Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.
R./ Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God, with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men.
R./ Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

Gospel Reading Introduction
For people who walk side-by-side with the Lord, there is no room for superiority complexes that look down on the people around us to condemn them. We have all the same calling in Christ. Do we not often judge and condemn in others that which, consciously or unconsciously, we condemn in ourselves? At times we even secretly rejoice that our brother or sister suffers from the same shortcoming to a greater extent than we do. If we apply the law to others, God will measure us with the same severity of the law. Let us look into ourselves and remove the beam from our own eyes before we discover the splinter in the eyes of others.

Gospel Reading: Mt 7:1– 5

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stop judging, that you may not be
judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the
measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do
not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you
say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your
eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite,
remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will
see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

Commentary

The power of judgment is one that we use every day. Making prudential judgments about the circumstances of our lives and the people with whom we work and live is absolutely necessary to our survival. While we can and should judge the actions of another, we must avoid the temptation to judge the state of that person's soul. Only God can do that. God alone sees what is secret.

Meanwhile, let us pray for those whose actions we judge to be misguided. Let us pray for their ongoing conversion of heart, and let us pray that the Lord will be merciful when our day of judgment comes.

General Intercessions

- Lord, do not allow us to take pleasure in judging people, but, like you, in pardoning them, we pray:

- Lord, let our faith be an act of trust that we are in your hands, you want our happiness and you know where you lead us, we pray:

- That the awareness of our own shortcomings may dispose us to put aside our irritation at the mistakes of others, we pray:

Prayer over the Gifts

Generous Father,
you give us your good gifts without measure,
for you are our Father.
Accept in these offerings of bread and wine
our willingness to learn from your Son
to love one another without measure,
to learn to understand one another
and to go together the ways of peace
of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer after Communion

Lord God, our Father,
your Son came into the world
not to condemn it but to save it.
For this he gives himself to us
here in this Eucharistic celebration.
Let us share in his attitude.
Make us look into our own hearts
and learn to see in our neighbor,
behind their faults and failures,
the face of him who came
to forgive and to fill us with his life,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Blessing

"Do not judge and you will not be judged." The tendency among us is so strong and persistent that it is very difficult to eradicate. May God bless you to make you more deeply Christian, so that he can judge you more mildly: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.