A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans
9:1-5
Brothers and sisters:
I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie;
my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness
that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ
for the sake of my own people,
my kindred according to the flesh.
They are children of Israel;
theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants,
the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;
theirs the patriarchs, and from them,
according to the flesh, is the Christ,
who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
From the Gospel according to Luke
14:1-6
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
and the people there were observing him carefully.
In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy.
Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking,
"Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?"
But they kept silent; so he took the man and,
after he had healed him, dismissed him.
Then he said to them
"Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?"
But they were unable to answer his question.
This very way “of living, attached to the law, distanced them from love and from justice: they were attentive to the law, they disregarded justice; they were attentive to the law, they overlooked love”. The Lord found these were “closed men, men too attached to the law”, or rather, too attached “to the letter of the law”, because “the law is love”. These men “always closed the doors of hope, of love, of salvation”. (…) This is precisely “the path that Jesus teaches us, the exact opposite of that of the doctors of the law”. And “this path, from love to justice, leads to God”. Only “the path that goes from love to knowledge and to discernment, to complete fulfillment, leads to holiness, to salvation, to the encounter with Jesus”. “The other path”, however, “that of sticking only to the law, to the letter of the law, leads to closure, leads to selfishness”. And it leads “to the arrogance of considering ourselves just”, to that so-called “‘holiness’ of appearances”. Such that “Jesus says to these people: you like people to see you as men of prayer, of fasting”. This is only for appearances. And “this is why Jesus said to the people: do what they say, not what they do”, because “that mustn’t be done”. (…) Jesus draws near: closeness is the very proof that we are “on the true path”. Because that is “the path that God has chosen in order to save us: closeness. He drew close to us, he made himself man”. And indeed, “God’s flesh is the sign; God’s flesh is the sign of true justice. God who made himself a man like one of us, and we who must make ourselves like the others, like the needy, like those who need our help”. (Pope Francis, Santa Marta, 31 October 2014)
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