Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
The Good News Of The Kingdom
Liturgical Cycle: A | Lectionary Cycle: II
Introduction
Year II. We are God’s community, and therefore all division among us is a shame. It shows that we have not yet grown up in the Spirit as “spiritual” people. If we could only grow up!
Gospel. Jesus has preached his message of hope in the lake town of Capernaum and confirmed it by liberating the poor and the sick from the powers of evil. He has to bring the same good news to other places. The gospel of hope in a new world is destined for all. With the people healed by Jesus, let us in this Eucharist thank the Lord for his good news.
Opening Prayer
Lord our God,
we thank you today for Jesus, your Son.
He came to heal our wounds
and to set us going on the way
to you and to one another.
Help us in our fumbling, stumbling attempts
to continue looking for him
and to make his gospel of hope and love
come true among us as the good news
that your Son is alive among us
and that he is our Lord for ever.
First Reading
The Immaturity of the Corinthians
I could not, friends, speak to you as spiritual people but as worldly ones, for you are still infants in Christ.
I gave you milk, not solid food,
because you weren’t ready for it, and even now, you can’t receive it because you’re still fleshly. As long as jealousy and conflict exist among you, I can only say that you’re acting on a fleshly level and behaving like ordinary people.
While one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ what are you but people still on a human level?
What are Apollos and Paul? They are ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each of them.
I planted, and Apollos watered the plant, but God made it grow.
Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything; it is God who makes the plant grow.
The person who plants and the one who waters work together toward the same goal, and the Lord will reward each according to their efforts.
We are coworkers with God, but you are God’s field and building.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (12) Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
From heaven the LORD looks down;
he sees all mankind.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
From his fixed throne he beholds
all who dwell on the earth,
He who fashioned the heart of each,
he who knows all their works.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield,
For in him our hearts rejoice;
in his holy name we trust.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Alleluia Verse
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Lord sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor
and to proclaim liberty to captives.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Bending over her, he rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately, she got up and started serving them.
demons were cast out, howling as they went, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” He rebuked them and didn’t allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.
But he said, “I have to go to other towns to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. That is what I was sent to do.”
And Jesus kept on preaching in the synagogues of Galilee.
Prayers of the Faithful
– That the Church may continue with compassion the task of healing of our Lord Jesus, that the sick may be comforted, the downtrodden set free, and the poor and the weak be protected, we pray:
– That the faith and the hope of the sick and the dying may be firmly anchored in our Lord Jesus who is the resurrection and the life, we pray:
– That we may learn more to heal one another by forgiving each other and by uplifting the sad and the discouraged, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
Lord our God,
we need your Son Jesus Christ
to be with us today.
Give him to us in this bread and wine,
that, weak and fallible as we are,
we may not give up the hope
that your kingdom of justice and peace
can take shape among us.
Let it become the humble sign
of your goodness and justice
and of your joy that lasts for ever.
Prayer after Communion
Lord our God,
in your power you care for the weak,
and so Jesus preferred the poor and the helpless.
Give us his Spirit of compassion and strength,
that we too may commit ourselves
to bring hope and justice
to the dispossessed and the lonely.
And take away our pride, Lord,
for we are perhaps weaker and poorer
than those we presume to uplift.
Count us among those in need of Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Saviour forever.
Blessing
Jesus cured the many who came to him with all sorts of diseases. Are we aware that we too can bring healing to others by showing them affection, compassion, and forgiveness? May the Lord make you attentive to the healing powers in you, and may God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
REFLECTIONS
Luke 4:38-44
Healed to rise and serve
In today’s Gospel, Jesus enters Simon Peter’s house and finds his mother-in-law suffering from a high fever. He bends toward her, rebukes the fever, and raises her up. Immediately, she begins to serve. Later, Jesus heals the sick who are brought to him and declares that he must carry the Good News to other cities.
Fr. Armellini offers a profound interpretation: Simon’s house can represent the house of Peter—the early Church, the house of the faithful. The woman’s illness, therefore, becomes an image of a Church infected by spiritual fever: a community whose members remain turned inward, unwilling to rise and serve their brothers and sisters.
This fever can appear as indifference, lack of empathy, spiritual laziness, or a comfortable faith that avoids responsibility. It confines us to the “bed” of self-absorption. Yet the Church is not meant to be a place where we remain passive. It is the household in which Christ heals us so that we may become servants.
Pope Benedict XVI beautifully says that Jesus takes us by the hand, raises us, and heals us through his Word and the sacraments; then, like Peter’s mother-in-law, we are made available to others.
Let us invite Jesus into every area of our lives and into the life of our community. May he cure the fever that keeps us imprisoned within ourselves. Healed from within, let us rise, serve the Church, and go out to meet a wounded world with compassion, hope, and the healing love of Christ.