Readings: Zec 2:5-9, 14-15; Ps Jer 31:10-13; Lk 9:43-45.
The readings today are prophetic, proclaiming both the presence of God and the passion of Jesus. ‘For I am coming to dwell in the middle of you’ is a promise of God’s presence which we hear often in the Old Testament. This is Immanuel – God with us – which the evangelists will express in different ways, culminating in the Incarnation expressed in the Gospel of John – ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us’. The presence of God in the person of Christ is an assurance of what one theologian said ‘represented God’s absolute involvement with humanity’.[1]
In place of the Psalm today the reading is taken from Jeremiah. Here the prophet proclaims the protection which God affords His people – ‘The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock’. This image of God’s protective promise is found in many places in the scriptures, most famously in the Psalm (23) of the same name, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’. Indeed Jesus will take up this image to indicate his own mission and identity –‘I am the good shepherd’ – going further to finally ‘lay down his life for the sheep’.
The Gospel reading picks up on this paschal presence. The irony of the statement, ‘at a time when everyone was full of admiration for all he did’, is not lost on us when placed alongside Jesus’ assertion that ‘The Son of Man is going to be handed over into the power of men’. This humble handing over by Jesus himself reveals a new presence and power of God, proclaimed ‘in his hour’ of departure from the earth, ‘it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you’ John 16:7). Christ’s presence and absence, dying and rising ‘opened up a way [and] if we follow this path, life and death are made holy and acquire a new meaning’.[2]
Kevin O’Gorman SMA
[1] Joseph Sittler, The Structure of Christian Ethics, Baton Rouge, 1958.
[2] Vatican Council II, Church in the Modern World, Par. 22