Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Malachi 3:19-20A 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 Luke 21:5-19

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The First Reading at the Divine Symphony today for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time from Malachi 3:19-20A is better contextualized if we begin at v. 13 where we read about the Lord critiquing His People’s disappointment. They are disappointed in living this life; treating it as a funeral, because there does not seem to be an immediate gain in this life by serving God and obeying His laws. It is frustrating to them that they see the “arrogant blessed” and not only do evildoers prosper but even when testing God, they escape. The Lord then assured His People that He does keep in His memory those who fear Him and “and esteem His name.” “They shall be mine, says the Lord of host, my own special possession, on the day when I take action. And I will have compassion on them, as a man has compassion on his son who serves him.” In today’s reading, God reminds His people that, while the evildoers may seem to lead a comfortable life today, there is a day coming, “blazing like an oven when all the arrogant and all evildoers will stumble, And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch.” Then He says, But for you who fear my name, the sun of justice will arise with healing in its wings; And you will go out leaping like calves from the stall.”

Is not that a wonderful image of the Holy
Mass? Christ, the Son of Justice arising – on the third day – with healing on
His wings – “wings” an image of Christ Jesus’ arms spread out on the Cross. As
for “leaping like calves from the stall,” if we truly believed the power and
healing we receive through the liturgy and, most especially, through consuming the
Holy Eucharist, we would be excited to be dismissed from the Mass; not because it
took too long, or because we have something better today, but, rather, because
we cannot wait to break back into the world to share with it what and who we
have received through the liturgy.  

The
Second Reading from Second Thessalonians
3:7-12 shows a different way how Christians ought not to approach life in this
world. While some of the People of the prophet Malachi’s time had to be
reminded why they ought to persevere in the faith because the day of the Lord
would come, some in the Church of Thessalonica had fallen to the sin of
presumption; thinking that the coming of the Lord was very near. This idea of the
near approach Parousia may have been part of the false teaching that the Church
of Thessalonica received from those who they thought were associated with the Apostolic
Church. In response, the Apostle Saint Paul reminds the People of example of
work and industry that the fathers of their Church set for them and commands
them in the name of Jesus Christ to imitate them in this way and to “keep away
from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition
that you received from us” (v. 6).

Paul sounds so completely judgmental,
does he not? He was essentially saying, ‘There are some bad people living among
you who call themselves Christians. They are not Christians because they do not
follow our tradition. Moreover, they are lazy bums who don’t mind their own
business. I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to stay away from them so
that they don’t infect you.’ This teaching on not following the ways of
evildoers is a teaching found in every book of the Bible, but is also a
teaching that is lost on a Church today; a Church that only wants to appease
the world and to appease sinners, so that they will like us and not think that
we are judging them.

Yet, setting God’s peculiar People
apart from the world is precisely what the Church is doing through the liturgy.
To this particular sacred space for everyday of the