Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 11:22 – 12:2 1 Thessalonians 1:11 – 2:2Luke 19:1-10

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The selection of readings at the Holy Mass for this 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time offers a powerful collection of Scriptures to entice us into knowing, understanding, and valuing the immensity of God’s of love and interest is in bringing His People into communion with Him.

The First Reading from the book of Wisdom 11:22 – 12:2 so beautifully describe the heart of God that it barely needs to be commented on, but if imagine if you will a God who never tires of the Holy Mass; of for centuries having those who love Him and those who He loves He gather together to offer Him worship and praise from the rising of the sun until its setting, from every corner of the earth. Imagine God never tiring to enter our bodies and being consumed by us as the Holy Eucharist. Never ceasing to gather His People across the span of centuries and revealing Himself to them in a manner that they can digest physically and spiritually. God does this because He deeply yearns for us to know that He is there for us and that He loves us. Though His love is always revealing itself and can never be hidden, paradoxically His love is also incomprehensible and unfathomable. To Him, both repentant sinners and saints alike approach with fear and trembling and love, because they know that He loved them first and loves them beyond even their own self-knowledge. For our daily sins of things that we have done and things we have failed to do, we truly deserve death, but as the text reads:

“Before the LORD the whole universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things! Therefore you rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O LORD!”

Most likely, while the Apostle Saint Paul was still in the city of Corinth, he was occasioned to receive a report from Timothy about the Church in Thessalonica where Timothy had been sent in Paul’s stead. There are good things to report about what is going with the Thessalonians, but also the community there had some questions and concerns about the fate of those who died. There seems to be some confusion going about because of small false teachers they had received; thinking that they were associated with Apostolic Church. Therefore, Paul’s address to that community in First Thessalonians concerns some strong units on eschatology. Here, in the opening of the letter, in 1:11 – 2:2, the Apostle begins with offering the faithful a word of encouragement to not be “shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed” concerning what Paul calls the parousia (the coming of Christ) “and our assembling with Him.”

The reason why the Apostle is saying
that there is no reason to worry or to be anxious is for the same reason he
will tell the Church at Philippi in a future letter; that, “He who began a good
work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). In this earlier
letter, he words this same truth in writing, “We always pray for you, that our
God may make you worthy of his calling and powerfully bring to fulfillment
every good purpose and every effort of faith, that the name of our Lord Jesus
may be glorified in you, an