Welcome Back to Banquet of the Word!
Join us every week for background on the Sunday readings.
Our mission is simple: We want to help everyone in “pew-land” get more out of mass. Because it’s fun to feel smart about scripture.
Fun Fact:
1. We’re back in Ordinary Time – the color is green in our churches now.
2. It’s summer break. My 4 kids are home with me all day, every day. I apologize the posts lately have been late! I’ll try to post earlier in the coming weeks. 🙂
1st Reading – Exodus 34: 4B-6, 8-9
(The 1st Reading is Old Testament. It always links to the Gospel.)
In today’s story, the Lord commands Moses to go BACK up the mountain to get 2 more stone tablets, 2 more tablets with the commandments on them. Why? Because we’re at the point in the story when God had already done that once with Moses, but the people were impatient. They didn’t know why it took so long for Moses to come back to them from atop the mountain.
What was he doing?
When would he come back?
What was wrong?
These may have been their thoughts. So the people, instead of being patient, built a golden calf to worship. This was such a grave sin that it is deemed “The Second Fall” (the first Fall being that of Adam and Eve).
In the reading though, we are after that “Second Fall.” God requests Moses’s presence again. God did not give up on His people, He gave the tablets AGAIN. He gave them a second chance.
Moses hears God say, “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”
- Have you ever been impatient with God? When?
- What did you do to pass the time? Did you “build a golden calf” or were you patient and waiting on the Lord’s timing?
- Does someone in your life need a second chance to try again?
Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinai
as the LORD had commanded him,
taking along the two stone tablets.Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses there
and proclaimed his name, “LORD.”
Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out,
“The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”
Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.
Then he said, “If I find favor with you, O Lord,
do come along in our company.
This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins,
and receive us as your own.”
Psalm – Deuteronomy 3: Glory and Praise Forever!
(The Psalm is a “response” to what we heard in the 1st Reading)
The response today comes not from the book of psalms, but from the book of Deuteronomy. This is fitting because in the first reading God gave Moses the law (the tablets) for the second time. “Deuteronomy” literally means “second giving of the law.”
2nd Reading: 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13
(The 2nd reading is usually one of Paul’s letters. It speaks to how the early church built The Church after the, death and resurrection).
These verses come at the tail end of Paul’s second letter to those in Corinth. The people there, the church there, was divided.
Paul works to unite them again, and he drives the point home up until the very end of the letter with these words:
Brothers and sisters, rejoice.
Mend your ways, encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the holy ones greet you.The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
- With whom do you need to mend ways? Whom can you encourage this week?
- Do you live in a peaceful home? How do you contribute to peace there? To strife?
Gospel – John 3: 16-18
(The Gospel is the highest point of the Liturgy of the Word. That’s why we stand.
We are about to hear from and be instructed by Christ Himself.)
Today we hear one of the most famous gospel verses – John 3:16. “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.”
When God gave us Jesus, Jesus eventually left us with the Holy Spirit here on Earth. These three make up our trinitarian God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Three in One.
Though not prompted by anything in particular, but knowing its popularity among the masses (at football games, for example), I sat in adoration a ways back thinking of this verse.
The part that stood out was the words “the world.”
God so loved THE WORLD that He gave His only son.
He didn’t love some and not others, young but not old, good but not bad – He loves them ALL. He so loved the world – past, present, future – that He gave us Jesus.
That’s an immense love. I felt small thinking about that. I am a mere grain of sand in God’s world, and yet to Him I am more precious than gold.
So are you. So is every being He created. And He gave us Jesus so we might be led back to the Father through His son.
- When is the last time you pondered God’s love for you?
- How can you respond to that love? Are you working toward eternal life with God in Heaven?
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.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Banquet of the Word 