Reflection 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Hear Oh Israel.....

On Saturday, 27 Oct 2018, a gunman entered a synagogue and opened fire killing eleven (11), and wounding several others.  As the last of those killed was buried, NBC presented the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead:  NBC Nightly News Kaddish -- Cantor Azi Schwartz of the Park Avenue Synagogue recites the Jewish Kaddish ( hat tip to Deacon's Bench).


Today's 1st Reading includes another very famous and common Jewish Prayer, the Shema:

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!

The homilist at Mass this morning pointed out that many devout Jews pray this every morning.  

In the Gospel Reading from today's Mass, a scribe approaches Jesus and asks him:

Which is the first of all the commandments?

Jesus' initial response is the shema (Dt 6:4-5).  He then quotes from a passage in Leviticus (Lv 19:18), saying:

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

In today's second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews we read:

      It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
      holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
      higher than the heavens.
      He has no need, as did the high priests,
      to offer sacrifice day after day,
      first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
      he did that once for all when he offered himself.
      For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
      but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
      appoints a son,
      who has been made perfect forever.

Jesus, the living bread come down from heaven, the way the truth and the life, the light of the world, the Word made flesh, does not offer sacrifice for his own sins, but for the sins of the world.

He who did not know sin became sin, took on the effects of sin, so that we who are sinners might have eternal life.  In his passion death and resurrection he gives himself completely for us, and in each and every Mass, he gives himself completely for us and to us so that we may have life and have it to the full.