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Lifelong Catechesis

Forming Catholic identity across generations
September 18, 2024
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Ordinary Time

For a large part of the liturgical year, we devote ourselves to listening to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects unfolded as we seek God's truth and understanding.

Sunday Readings and Backgrounds

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Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading I : Malachi 1:14b-2:2b, 8-10

Honor God with your best gifts. Be faithful one to another.

  • Malachi contrasted how God’s own people disrespected him to how other nations respected him.
  • For this dishonor the priests would be cursed.
  • The people were accused of infidelity in marriage.
  • Parent-child and husband-wife relationships were compared to God’s covenant with Israel.

Reading II : 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13

God’s Word is at work in believers.

  • Paul said Sylvanus and Timothy, like parents, had spent their lives to bring the message of God to the Thessalonians.
  • Sylvanus and Timothy had functioned as true apostles.
  • They had not distorted the Gospel by their own self-seeking.

Gospel : Matthew 23:1-12

Seek God’s honor, not your own honor.

  • Jesus told the Pharisees that they taught the law but did not practice it, nor exhibit the compassion the law requires.
  • Some Pharisees used the Law and their office for their own benefit.
  • To seek exaltation was to be humbled; to seek humiliation was to be exalted.
  • Seek God’s honor, not your own.