Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Today’s readings reflect on the theme of God’s people – both their character and God’s expectations of them.

In today’s psalm, we hear the refrain “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own” (Ps 33: 12) We know that God chose the Jewish people to enter into a covenant with Him; he expected that they honor Him alone as God in return for His protection. Yet, how often do we reflect upon the fact that God chose them. They didn’t choose God. Indeed they are “the chosen people,” not “the people who made a choice.” Of course, the covenant required that the people uphold their end of it, that they respond to God’s choice. Their primary role was that of dedicated response, not picking God out of an array of options. Acknowledging our Jewish heritage, one of the descriptors for the Church is the “People of God.” In Eucharistic Prayer III, we claim the designation of God’s people come to us through Christ: “Through His cross and resurrection He freed us from sin and death and called us to the glory that has made us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart.” We are a part of the Church because God has chosen us. We may, as Paul tells the Corinthians, not be numbered among the elite of the world (see 1 Cor 1:26-27), but God has called us. We are left not with that fundamental choice to make, but rather we are left with how to respond.

The gospel parable illustrates various responses of those who had been chosen by the master to tend to his talents. God has given us the gift of His call. Let us strive first, to receive and recognize that gift as precisely as a gift (and not a burden or imposition or choice of our own) and second, to make our lives a return-gift to God.

- Tim Gabrielli