Daily Reading
First Reading
Romans 11:29-36
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him,
to receive a gift in return?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
Psalm
Psalm 69:30-31, 33-34, 36
I will praise the name of God with a song;
I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
This will please the Lord more than an ox
or a bull with horns and hoofs.
For the Lord hears the needy,
and does not despise his own that are in bonds.
Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and everything that moves in them.
the children of his servants shall inherit it,
and those who love his name shall live in it.
Gospel Reading
Luke 14:12-14
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Reflection
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us this extraordinary command to consider the weakest and most vulnerable in our society: “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” This is one of his central concerns throughout the Gospels. Aliens, strangers, foreigners, widows, orphans, the poor—if these weak people are ignored, God will become angry.
God’s passion not only runs right through the biblical tradition but it comes roaring up into the social teaching of the Catholic Church: “If you have two coats in your closet, one belongs to you; the other belongs to the man who has no coat.”
Let us not forget the poor and marginalized today.