Gospel: August 31, 2025
August 31, 2025 (Sunday)
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Psalter: Week 2 / (Green)
Ps 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11
God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.
1st Reading: Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29
2nd Reading: Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a
Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14
One Sabbath Jesus had gone to eat a meal in the house of a leading Pharisee, and he was carefully watched. Jesus then told a parable to the guests, for he had noticed how they tried to take the places of honor. And he said, “When you are invited to a wedding party, do not choose the best seat. It may happen that someone more important than you has been invited; and your host, who invited both of you, will come and say to you, ‘Please give this person your place.’ What shame is yours when you take the lowest seat! Whenever you are invited, go rather to the lowest seat, so that your host may come and say to you, ‘Friend, you must come up higher.’ And this will be a great honor for you in the presence of all the other guests. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus also addressed the man who had invited him, and said, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, or your brothers and relatives, or your wealthy neighbors. For surely they will also invite you in return, and you will be repaid. When you give a feast, invite instead the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Fortunate are you then, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the upright.”
Lectio Divina:
“Invite others who are often neglected.”
Read: Sirach teaches us to act with discretion and humility. Hebrews describes Christ as the Mediator of the New Covenant that admits us to the heavenly Jerusalem. Jesus teaches his ambitious guests that they are to act humbly, and to honor those who are pushed to the margins.
Reflect: Sirach says that the wise person “reflects on proverbs,” but pride has made those invited to dinner in today’s Gospel to forget to reflect on Sirach’s words, “the greater you are, the more you should humble yourself.” The guests are trying to show their greatness by jostling for the place of honor, not realizing that they lose that honor in their zeal to grab it from someone else. Jesus reminds us that no matter how accomplished or successful we are, we should always acknowledge our limitations and the dignity of others. Therefore, we are not to presume to take the place of honor when we are the guest, and we are to invite others who are often neglected.
Pray: Pray before the Blessed Sacrament, meditating on the reality before you. Think of what you have “come near”: Christ himself in the presence of the angels.
Act: Volunteer to help at a homeless center or soup kitchen or devote greater attention to a neighbor who needs some help.
