2017년 9월 14일 성 십자가 현양 축일
오늘의 복음 : http://info.catholic.or.kr/missa/default.asp
제1독서
민수기. 21,4ㄴ-9<또는 필리 2,6-11>
그 무렵 4 백성은 마음이 조급해졌다. 5 그래서 백성은 하느님과 모세에게 불평하였다.
“당신들은 어쩌자고 우리를 이집트에서 올라오게 하여, 이 광야에서 죽게 하시오? 양식도 없고 물도 없소. 이 보잘것없는 양식은 이제 진저리가 나오.”
6 그러자 주님께서 백성에게 불 뱀들을 보내셨다. 그것들이 백성을 물어, 많은 이스라엘 백성이 죽었다. 7 백성이 모세에게 와서 간청하였다. “우리가 주님과 당신께 불평하여 죄를 지었습니다. 이 뱀을 우리에게서 치워 주시도록 주님께 기도해 주십시오.” 그래서 모세가 백성을 위하여 기도하였다. 8 그러자 주님께서 모세에게 말씀하셨다.
“너는 불 뱀을 만들어 기둥 위에 달아 놓아라. 물린 자는 누구든지 그것을 보면 살게 될 것이다.” 9 그리하여 모세는 구리 뱀을 만들어 그것을 기둥 위에 달아 놓았다. 뱀이 사람을 물었을 때, 그 사람이 구리 뱀을 쳐다보면 살아났다.
제2독서
필리피서 2,6-11
그리스도 예수님께서는 6 하느님의 모습을 지니셨지만 하느님과 같음을 당연한 것으로 여기지 않으시고 7 오히려 당신 자신을 비우시어 종의 모습을 취하시고 사람들과 같이 되셨습니다. 이렇게 여느 사람처럼 나타나 8 당신 자신을 낮추시어 죽음에 이르기까지, 십자가 죽음에 이르기까지 순종하셨습니다.
9 그러므로 하느님께서도 그분을 드높이 올리시고 모든 이름 위에 뛰어난 이름을 그분께 주셨습니다. 10 그리하여 예수님의 이름 앞에 하늘과 땅 위와 땅 아래에 있는 자들이 다 무릎을 꿇고 11 예수 그리스도는 주님이시라고 모두 고백하며 하느님 아버지께 영광을 드리게 하셨습니다
복음
요한. 3,13-17
그때에 예수님께서 니코데모에게 말씀하셨다.
13 “하늘에서 내려온 이, 곧 사람의 아들 말고는 하늘로 올라간 이가 없다. 14 모세가 광야에서 뱀을 들어 올린 것처럼, 사람의 아들도 들어 올려져야 한다. 15 믿는 사람은 누구나 사람의 아들 안에서 영원한 생명을 얻게 하려는 것이다.
16 하느님께서는 세상을 너무나 사랑하신 나머지 외아들을 내주시어, 그를 믿는 사람은 누구나 멸망하지 않고 영원한 생명을 얻게 하셨다. 17 하느님께서 아들을 세상에 보내신 것은, 세상을 심판하시려는 것이 아니라, 세상이 아들을 통하여 구원을 받게 하시려는 것이다.”
September 14, 2019
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Daily Mass : http://www.catholictv.com/shows/daily-mass
Reading 1
Nm 21:4b-9
the people complained against God and Moses,
"Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,
where there is no food or water?
We are disgusted with this wretched food!"
In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents,
which bit the people so that many of them died.
Then the people came to Moses and said,
"We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.
Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us."
So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,
"Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live."
Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole,
and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent
looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 78:1bc-2, 34-35, 36-37, 38
Hearken, my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable,
I will utter mysteries from of old.
R. Do not forget the works of the Lord!
While he slew them they sought him
and inquired after God again,
Remembering that God was their rock
and the Most High God, their redeemer.
R. Do not forget the works of the Lord!
But they flattered him with their mouths
and lied to him with their tongues,
Though their hearts were not steadfast toward him,
nor were they faithful to his covenant.
R. Do not forget the works of the Lord!
But he, being merciful, forgave their sin
and destroyed them not;
Often he turned back his anger
and let none of his wrath be roused.
R. Do not forget the works of the Lord!
Reading 2
Phil 2:6-11
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel
Jn 3:13-17
"No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him
http://evangeli.net/gospel/tomorrow
«So that whoever believes in him may have eternal life»
Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench
(Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)
Today, the Gospel is a prophecy, that is, a glance into the mirror of reality that plunges us in its truth, far beyond what our own senses tell us: the Cross, the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ is the Saviour's Throne. That is why Jesus asserts, «the Son of man must be lifted up» (Jn 3:14).
We do know the Cross was the most ignominious and heinous torture of its time. To exalt the Holy Cross would therefore be some sort of cynical joke, was it not because the Crucified is hanging on it. The cross, without the Redeemer, is sheer cynicism; but with the Son of man the Cross is the new tree of Wisdom. By «freely submitting himself to the passion» of the Cross, Jesus Christ has opened the substance and purpose for our lives: to be lifted up with him to the Holy Cross to fling open our arms and our heart to God's heavenly gift, in an admirable exchange. Here too, we must listen to the Father's voice that came from the heavens: «You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased» (Mk 1:11). To be crucified with Jesus and resurrect with him: that is the reason for it all! There is hope, there is a meaning, and there is life! We are not mad when, we Christians, during the Paschal Vigil, in a most solemn way, that is, in the Easter Proclamation, sing a hymn of praise to the original sin: «O happy fault! O necessary fault of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!», who, through his pain has infused a new “significance” to pain.
«See the tree of the cross, where the Saviour of the world was crucified: come and venerate it» (Good Friday Liturgy). If we manage to overcome the scandal and insanity of Christ crucified there is nothing else for us to do but to worship him and be grateful for his Gift. And to decidedly seek the Holy Cross in our own life, to fill us up with the certainty that, «through him, with him and in him», our donation will be transformed, in the hands of the Father, for the Holy Spirit, in eternal life: «Shed for you and for many in the remission of sins».
http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
This reflection will be coming soon. Until then, here is a reflection by Dennis Hamm, S.J. from 2011.
This feast goes back to the 4th century AD and celebrates the finding of the true cross by St. Helena, the mother of Constantine. She was helped in her search for the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection by the ironic fact that the Romans tried to obscure Christian sites by building pagan temples over them. When Helena’s crew dug at the site of the Roman temple that Christians had long associated with Calvary, they discovered an ancient quarry with a mound built up around a flawed section of bedrock in one part and, a few yards to the west of that, a set of horizontal graves cut into the bedrock wall of the quarry. Archeologists have no trouble affirming this area, which was outside the city gates in the first century, as the probable site of Jesus crucifixion and resurrection. The wooden beams that Helen found preserved there have a great chance of being the true cross.
We twenty-first century Christians are so familiar with the cross as a Christian symbol that we can miss the scandal it was for Jews like Saul of Tarsus, at first, to accept that someone who was killed in this form of execution could possibly be the Messiah of God. For death by crucifixion was the lowest, most degrading form of capital punishment in the Empire’s repertoire of punishment; it was only applied to non-citizens, most commonly rebellious slaves.
St. Paul was aware of this when he made today’s second reading, the famous emptying-out hymn (Phil 2:6-11), the heart of his letter to the Philippians. The Philippian church was a distinct minority in the Roman colony of Philippi, an extremely status-conscious place, to judge from the self-promoting monuments that the elite citizens put up in public places to celebrate their high places in the local pecking order. When he reminds the Philippian Christians to “put on the mind of Christ” and then proceeds to illustrate that “mind” by the hymn, he knows he is being deliberately counter-cultural with respect to the typical mind-set of Philippi. For the story of Jesus is all “downward mobility” until death by crucifixion, from which he is raised from the dead by the Father. The eternal Son “did not regard equality with God something to be clung to [a more accurate translation than ‘to be grasped’]. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness [the incarnation]; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death [his life of self-giving service] even death on a cross [the death of a slave!].” Verses 9-11 then proceed to describe the Father’s exaltation of Jesus to the point where he in honored not only as Messiah (Christ) but as Lord (Kyrios, which means not only ‘Master’--the opposite of ‘slave’--but also Lord in the sense of divine (given the passage’s allusion to Isaiah 45:23, where Lord is the name of God).
Paul really means that the Christian way is to imitate this mind-set of Christ in self-emptying service of one another. The best way to ponder this way of the cross is to read this short four-chapter letter and marvel at how Paul dares to present himself as an example of the joy that comes from the kind of imitation of Christ. He can do all things in the one (the exalted Christ) who empowers him (Phil 4:13). So can we.
http://www.presentationministries.com/obob/obob.asp
THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS AND OF THE MASS | ||
| "He humbled Himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross!" �Philippians 2:8 | ||
Jesus began the day of His death on the cross by celebrating the first Mass. The Mass makes present the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1366). "In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ Who offered Himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner" (Catechism, 1367). Consequently, those who adore Christ crucified and "take up His cross each day" (Lk 9:23) are called to center their lives on the Mass. Those who truly claim to be Eucharistic are "crucified with Christ" (Gal 2:19) and make their lives the "way of the cross." Jesus' cross and Eucharist should always be together. Today as we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, let us eat Jesus' Flesh and drink His Blood in Holy Communion and "proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes!" (1 Cor 11:26) If we take up the crosses of Gospel poverty, fasting, making sacrifices, washing others' feet (Jn 13:5), taking the lowest place (Lk 14:10), and forgiving our enemies, we will find that we love the Eucharist more than ever. If we center our lives on Sunday Mass, prepare for Mass, try to go to Mass daily, and make visits to the Blessed Sacrament, we will not run away from the cross. Instead, we will wonderfully and joyfully embrace it. "Lift high the cross," and lift high the Eucharistic body of the Lord. | ||
| Prayer: Father, may I learn from the stigmatists, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Padre Pio, to live an intensely Eucharistic "way of the cross." | ||
| Promise: "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that all who believe may have eternal life in Him." —Jn 3:14-15 | ||
| Praise: "May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! Through it, the world has been crucified to me and I to the world" (Gal 6:14). |
http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/readings/
"So must the Son of Man be lifted up"
Do you know the healing transforming power of the cross of Jesus Christ? The Lord Jesus came to unite earth with heaven and to raise those on earth to the glory of heaven. Jesus explains to Nicodemus, one of the chief leaders of the Jewish nation, that he is the "Son of Man" sent by the Father in heaven to restore our broken relationship with God. The "Son of Man" is a key Old Testament title for the Messiah who comes from heaven to establish God's kingdom on the earth (see the prophecy of Daniel 7:13-14).
Moses delivers his people from death in the wilderness
What does Jesus mean when he says the "Son of Man must be lifted up?" Jesus links this ｅxpression with Moses who "lifted up" the bronze serpent in the wilderness in order to bring about healing and restoration of life to those who were bitten by deadly serpents. This plague of death was the result of the peoples' stubborn refusal to follow God's counsel and direction for their welfare. God in his mercy heard the prayer of Moses to free his people from this curse. God instructed Moses to "make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live" (Numbers 21:8). Moses lifted high the image of a bronze serpent fixed to the wood of the pole, which resembled a cross. Those who put their faith in God by repenting of their disobedience were healed and restored to wholeness of life.
Jesus links his victory on the cross with Moses' act of deliverance
Jesus clearly links Moses' act of deliverance in the wilderness with his own impending sacrificial death when he will be "lifted up" on the wood of the cross at Calvary. Unlike Moses' deliverance in the wilderness which only resulted in temporary relief for the people, Jesus' atoning death on the cross brought decisive victory over sin, Satan, and death. Jesus' victory on the cross cancels the debt of our sin, and releases us from guilt and condemnation. His death and victory brings us new life - the new abundant life in his Holy Spirit which lasts forever.
Jesus' victory on the cross also brought about his glorious bodily resurrection to new unending life and his ascension to the right hand of the Father in heaven, where he now rules and intercedes for us. The result of Jesus "being lifted up on the cross," and his rising and ascending to the Father's right hand in heaven, is our "new birth in the Spirit" and adoption as sons and daughters of God. God not only has redeemed us from sin in Christ, he also fills us with his own divine life through the gift of his Spirit that we might share in his own glory.
The proof of God's love for us
There is no greater proof of God's love for us then the sending of his Son to become one with us in our humanity and to lay down his life for us. "To ransom a slave God gave his Son" (an ancient prayer from the Easter vigil liturgy). God sent his Son to free us from the worst of tyrannies - slavery to sin and the curse of death. Jesus' sacrificial death was an act of total love through self-giving. Jesus gave himself completely out of love for his Father. And he willing laid down his life out of selfless love for our sake and for our salvation. His death on the cross was both a total offering to God and the perfect sacrifice of atonement for our sin and the sin of the world.
John tells us that God's love cannot be limited because it is boundless and encompasses all of creation (John 3:16). His love is not limited to a single nation or a few chosen friends. His love is limitless because it embraces the whole world and every individual created in "his image and likeness". God is a persistent loving Father who cannot rest until all of his wandering children have returned home to him. Saint Augustine says, God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
The love of God is rooted in truth, goodness, and mercy
God gives us the freedom to choose whom and what we will love and not love. We can love the darkness of sin and unbelief or we can love the light of God's truth, goodness, and mercy. If our love is guided by truth, goodness, and that which is truly beautiful, then we will choose for God and love him above all else. What we love shows what we prefer. Do you love God who is the supreme good above all else? And do you seek to put him first in all your thoughts, cares, choices, and actions?
God's love sets us free to love and serve others
God's love has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Do you allow God's love to purify your heart and the way your treat others? Do you allow God's love to transform your mind and the way you think of others? Do you allow God's love to conquer every unruly passion and addiction that would enslave you to sin and harmful behavior? The Holy Spirit gives us his seven-fold gifts of wisdom and understanding, right judgment and courage, knowledge and reverence for God and his ways, and a holy fear in God's presence (see Isaiah 11) that we may live God's way of life and serve in the power and strength of his enduring love and mercy. Do you thirst for new life in the Spirit?
"Lord Jesus Christ, your death brought life for us. Fill me with your Holy Spirit that I may walk in freedom and joy as a child of God and as an heir with Christ of an eternal inheritance."
Psalms 78:1-2,34-38
1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,
34 When he slew them, they sought for him; they repented and sought God earnestly.
35 They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer.
36 But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues.
37 Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not true to his covenant.
38 Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often, and did not stir up all his wrath.
Daily Quote from the early church fathers: Story of Moses and the bronze serpent, by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD)
"This story is a type of the whole mystery of the incarnation. For the serpent signifies bitter and deadly sin, which was devouring the whole race on the earth... biting the Soul of man and infusing it with the venom of wickedness. And there is no way that we could have escaped being conquered by it, except by the relief that comes only from heaven. The Word of God then was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, 'that he might condemn sin in the flesh' (Romans 8:3), as it is written. In this way, he becomes the Giver of unending salvation to those who comprehend the divine doctrines and gaze on him with steadfast faith. But the serpent, being fixed upon a lofty base, signifies that Christ was clearly manifested by his passion on the cross, so that none could fail to see him." (excerpt from COMMENTARY on THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 2.1)
More Homilies
September 14, 2017 Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
