Sermon for 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C Homily

Love, Forgiveness, Salvation (Lk 7:36-50)
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
 Situating ourselves within the Gospel of Luke
During this liturgical year, our gospel readings come from the Gospel of Luke.  The public ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke begins in Chapter 4 (vv.14-30) with the proclamation of his mission statement using the words of prophet Isaiah, in the synagogue at Nazareth. “Good News to the Poor”, was his motto.  Jesus seems to give a very broad meaning to the word ‘poor’. In Chapters 4 to 6 of Luke, Jesus has been curing the sick and the possessed, being kind to women (Lk 4:38-39), feeding the hungry (Lk 6:1-3), giving hope to the hopeless (Lk 6:17f) and forgiving sinners (Lk 5:20). Yes, sinners too lack something – forgiveness and salvation.  (See Lk 7:22 for a concise summary). Meanwhile the Pharisees and the […]

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Sermon for 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C Homily

Life to the Full (Lk 7:11-17)
10th Sunday in Ordinary Time
 After the Season of Lent and the great festivities that followed we are now resuming the Ordinary Time of the Year.  We resume from where we had left just before the Ash Wednesday, hence, this Sunday is the 10th Sunday in Cycle C.  We will go on in this sequence, listening to the Gospel of Luke, until the Feast of Christ the King.
The first reading and the gospel text of today narrate to us two stories of raising young men from the dead – one by Prophet Elijah and the other by Jesus.  There is a similarity between the two stories, namely, both the dead men were young sons of widows. But there are also dissimilarities between the stories. It is important to notice one basic difference that highlights the […]

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