Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year B

Thirtieth Ordinary Sunday 

Images

Helplessness of a blind man

Points to note

Here is another vivid story told by Mark.  This is one of the few stories that centres so much on the person who was healed instead of on Jesus.  Much has been said about the response of Bartimaeus on hearing that Jesus was to come into Jericho.

It may therefore be an idea to centre the session around Bartimaeus.  For starters, a variant of the game of blind man’s buff could be fun, especially for the younger ones:  Get a volunteer, preferably one who is not told what will happen next.  Have him or her blindfolded.  Turn the volunteer round several times to disorientate him or her.  Rearrange the room to place as many obstacles as possible. Then, the volunteer is to make his or her own way to the door.  No one is allowed to give instructions.  Watch the fun.  Try it again a second time.  This time, the other children are, then, to guide the volunteer to the door or some other object.

The point of this little game is to bring out the idea of helplessness and the availability of some one to help and guide.  This will link up with the idea of being poor in the spirit and being totally reliant on God. This is the situation that God wants us to be in, and this is the situation that Bartimaeus was in.  God is a little bit of a jealous kind.  He wants us to be like a new-born babe and to be the only one we can turn to in our helplessness.

Liturgy

Acclamation before the Gospel

Alleluia! Alleluia!

I am the light of the world, says the Lord,

anyone who follows me will have the light of life.

Alleluia!

Gospel

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Mark

(Mk10: 46-52)

As Jesus left Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (that is, the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting by the side of the road.  When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and to say, “Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me.”  And many of them scolded him. And told him to keep quiet, but he only shouted all the louder,  “Son of David, have pity on me” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him here.” So they called the blind man. “Courage,” they said, “get up; he is calling you.”  So throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus.  Then Jesus spoke, “What do you want me to do for you?”  “Master,” the blind man said to him, “let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has saved you.”  And immediately his sight returned and he followed him along the road.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Discussion

(Assuming that you have played the game above)  Get the volunteer to describe how he or she feels about volunteering or being volunteered.  What did the other children feel about this one child volunteering/being volunteered?

Get the volunteer to describe how he or she feels when blindfolded, and then turned around several times, had the room rearranged and then told to make his or her way to the door?  Was it easy to find the door the first time?  Was it frustrating?  How did the other children feel when they could see him or her heading the wrong way but could not give any guidance?  What about the second time?  How did the volunteer feel about getting all these guidance?  Was it easier?  What did the others feel?

Explain that the whole idea of this little game is to show what is meant by being poor in the spirit.  Being poor in the spirit, as the Beatitudes had wanted us to be, means that we are so totally helpless that we have no one to rely on.  When we are poor in the spirit, we therefore have to rely on no one but God and God alone. 

(If you did not play the game, take the children through the scene from Bartimaeus’ point of view: the dust in the hot sun, the noise, the crowds, lots of movement)

Back to Bartimaeus:  put ourselves in his shoes, if he had any, that is.  Discus how helpless he was in his blindness.  Discuss how he felt when he heard that Jesus the master healer was coming to town.  He decided that he would ask Jesus to heal him.  Discuss what else he could have done instead: he could have felt that his problem wasn’t big enough to bother Jesus with.  He could have felt that he wasn’t important enough to get Jesus’ attention.  He could have felt that there are others who may also need to ask Jesus.  He could have felt embarrassed to ask Jesus in front of so many people.  He could have felt that other people may not like him to cause a commotion in public.

But Bartimaeus did not do any of these things and he was healed. Discuss how Bartimaeus must have felt after he was healed.  Parallel all these discussions with how the volunteer in the earlier game felt.

Discuss how we should be praying to God in our nightly prayers tonight.  How could we be poor in the spirit like Bartimaeus and yet, persistent like he was? Surely we must have things that we would like to ask Jesus for.

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year A

Thirtieth Ordinary Sunday

Images

Loving God

Loving people

Points to note

This is a lovely reading, which forms the crux of our Christian living.  There is, however, a danger in not preparing well enough as the session could be very unfocussed.

There is little that is doctrinal in this passage.  There is no complicated plot or allegory to unravel.  All in all, there is little to explain.  We ought to move on rather quickly to the practical aspects of loving.  For this instance, we concentrate on loving God and the image of him as the head of the family.

Liturgy

Acclamation before the Gospel

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Open our heart, O Lord,

to accept the words of your Son.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Explain to the children that Jesus had just had to fend off attempts by the Jews to trap him.  Remember the trap of the Pharisees last week with the coin?  Saducees are a group of powerful Jews during Jesus’ times who do not believe in certain things like angels and the resurrection.

The Lord be with you.

All:   And also with your spirit.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Matthew

All:   Glory to you O Lord

 (Mt 22: 23-40)

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Saducees they got together and, to disconcert him, one of them put a question, “Which is the greatest of the commandment of the Law?”  Jesus said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second resembles it: you must love your neighbour as yourself.  On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.”

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Discussion

Explain the setting: one by one, over the past few weeks, we had different groups of people coming to Jesus trying to trap him.  This week it is the turn of the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were people who were very strict about following the precepts and rituals of the Mosaic Law, as contained in the first five books of the Old Testament.  They believe that salvation comes from strictly following the Law to the letter.  So, from the Ten commandments, they expanded them to 637 commandments. 

For instance, from the simple commandment to keep the Sabbath Holy, the Pharisees defined it that one should do no work on the Sabbath.  Then to the question what constitute work, they came up with 39 prohibited categories.  One of these categories is to carry something from one domain to another.  So, what happens when someone’s cow fall into the ditch?  Wouldn’t common sense dictate that they pull it out?  But that would contravene the Law.  Which is why Jesus asked this very question in Lk 14:5 and Mt 12:11.  Which is why Pharisees disliked him.

So the trap set was like this: with 637 commandments, you can expect people to have very differing views as to which one is the favourite.  So, ask Jesus to state which of the 637 is his favourite and watch him get bogged down with everyone disagreeing with him and trying to advance their own favourite.

Jesus, however, turned the tables on them by appealing to the more basic commandment, from which all these 637 spring: the commandment to Love.  In Christianity, the injunction to love and mercy overrides everything else.  It is just due to our human inadequacies that we are not always able to find an answer to love constantly in this complex modern human society.  Love and mercy, while considered a virtue in most other religions, is obligatory in Christianity.

Do people like Pharisees still exist today – people who think applying the letter of the law is the key to salvation?  Yes, of course.  Modern Orthodox Jews have reinterpreted the commandments in the light of modern technology.  For instance, another of the 39 prohibited categories for the Sabbath includes lighting and extinguishing fires.  Now, how does a modern car start?  Spark plugs and an internal combustion engine – they involve constant lighting and extinguishing fires.  So, driving cars is prohibited for orthodox Jews on their Sabbath.  Would you like to live like this?

The Islamic religion is also based on strict reading of the Quran.  And some interpretation is more conservative than others.  For instance, Muslims also have a story in the hadiths of an adulterous woman being brought to the Prophet for him to decide what to do with her.  But unlike Jesus who forgave her, the Prophet instead ordered her to be stoned to death as that is what was stipulated in the Law.

Even Christians are not immune, with some fundamentalist Christians taking a very literalist view of what the scriptures says.  For instance, there are churches that deny blood transfusions because of their reading of Old Testament passages.

So, in carrying out our religious duties, we must always remember that the injunction to love comes before anything else.  Which is why Pope Francis has constantly highlighted the need for mercy in pastoral duty rather than a blind adherence to the letter of the laws of the Church. The Laws were made for us to help us love more.  If the Laws to not enable us to love, do the Laws need to be relooked into?

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

LSW children

Year C

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Images

Bargaining with God

Points to note

The dialogue for this session revolves around leading the children to discuss what they think God owes them as a result of their good works.  Inevitably, the children may already know that God does not owe them anything.  As a child, I knew that but I was a little devious in suggesting to God that the good deed I did that day was not done with any motive but I will leave it up to God how he intends to respond to my good deed!

The idea is that God does not owe us anything and we cannot bargain with God but we try to contrast between what the children think and what we then lead them to realise.  The contrast is, then, between the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Liturgy

Acclamation before the Gospel

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Blessed are you, Father,

Lord of heaven and earth,

for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Explain what a Pharisee is.  They are members of a group within Judaism who believe that salvation lies in being faithful to God by scrupulously following the Law to the letter and that anyone not following the exact wording of the law is condemned.  A tax collector, on the other hand, is treated as an outcast of society because they work for the Romans, who are foreigners and because they tend to collect more than their due.

The Lord be with you.

All:   And with your spirit.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Luke

All:   Glory to you O Lord

 (Lk 18:9-14)

Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else.  “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here.  I fast twice a week; I pay my Temple taxes on all I get.”  The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his chest and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.

This is the Gospel of the Lord

Dialogue

Have we all done good things at home?  For Mom and Dad.  When we do good things, will Mom and Dad do anything in return for us?  Have we ever had an arrangement with Dad so that he would buy us, say, a bicycle if we pass the exams?  Discuss how parents would ‘owe’ children things if they do good.  Extend the discussion to bargaining with God.  If we do certain good things, what does God owe us?

Discuss the parable again.  Discuss what the Pharisee and the tax collector were thinking.  Ask the children what the Pharisee thought he has done right (look at what he said) and what God owes him for it.  Ask the children what the tax collector thought he has done wrong and how he thinks God will deal with him (not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven).  Spend more time on the reading as there is a lot there that tells us what the Pharisee and the tax collector said.

So, does God owe anything to the Pharisee?  So it is with us: does God owe us anything for all the good things that we have done?  Contrast that with the answers that the children have given to the question at the beginning of the session.

What about the tax collector?  Was God happy with him?  If so, was God happy with him because of the bad things that he had done or was it because he humbled himself and acknowledged it?

Link it to what is expected of us.  Do we think we owe everything to God or that God owes us something.  The thing the Pharisee did wrong was to think that he earned his rights to heaven because of what he did by himself, not that God who has full rights to decide who is saved and who will not, has given him the grace to be saved.  The tax collector who knows he is totally useful without God’s mercy has something that God liked which the Pharisee did not – the awareness that he (the tax collector) is totally reliant on God.

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year B

Thirtieth Ordinary Sunday

Images

Helplessness of a blind man

Points to note

Here is another vivid story told by Mark.  This is one of the few stories that centres so much on the person who was healed instead of on Jesus.  Much has been said about the response of Bartimaeus on hearing that Jesus was to come into Jericho.

It may therefore be an idea to centre the session around Bartimaeus.  For starters, a variant of the game of blind man’s buff could be fun, especially for the younger ones:  Get a volunteer, preferably one who is not told what will happen next.  Have him or her blindfolded.  Turn the volunteer round several times to disorientate him or her.  Rearrange the room to place as many obstacles as possible.  Then, the volunteer is to make his or her own way to the door.  No one is allowed to give instructions.  Watch the fun.  Try it again a second time.  This time, the other children are, then, to guide the volunteer to the door or some other object.

The point of this little game is to bring out the idea of helplessness and the availability of some one to help and guide.  This will link up with the idea of being poor in the spirit and being totally reliant on God.  This is the situation that God wants us to be in, and this is the situation that Bartimaeus was in.  God is a little bit of a jealous kind.  He wants us to be like a new-born babe and to be the only one we can turn to in our helplessness.

Liturgy

Acclamation before the Gospel

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

I am the light of the world, says the Lord,

anyone who follows me will have the light of life.

Alleluia!

Gospel

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Mark

(Mk 10: 46-52)

As Jesus left Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (that is, the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting by the side of the road.  When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and to say, “Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me.”  And many of them scolded him. And told him to keep quiet, but he only shouted all the louder,  “Son of David, have pity on me” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him here.”  So they called the blind man.  “Courage,” they said, “get up; he is calling you.”  So throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus.  Then Jesus spoke, “What do you want me to do for you?”  “Master,” the blind man said to him, “let me see again.”  Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has saved you.”  And immediately his sight returned and he followed him along the road.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Discussion

(Assuming that you have played the game above)  Get the volunteer to describe how he or she feels about volunteering or being volunteered.  What did the other children feel about this one child volunteering/being volunteered?

Get the volunteer to describe how he or she feels when blindfolded, and then turned around several times, had the room rearranged and then told to make his or her way to the door?  Was it easy to find the door the first time?  Was it frustrating?  How did the other children feel when they could see him or her heading the wrong way but could not give any guidance?  What about the second time?  How did the volunteer feel about getting all these guidance?  Was it easier?  What did the others feel?

Explain that the whole idea of this little game is to show what is meant by being poor in the spirit.  Being poor in the spirit, as the Beatitudes had wanted us to be, means that we are so totally helpless that we have no one to rely on.  When we are poor in the spirit, we therefore have to rely on no one but God and God alone.

(If you did not play the game, take the children through the scene from Bartimaeus’ point of view: the dust in the hot sun, the noise, the crowds, lots of movement)

Back to Bartimaeus:  put ourselves in his shoes, if he had any, that is.  Discus how helpless he was in his blindness.  Discuss how he felt when he heard that Jesus the master healer was coming to town.  He decided that he would ask Jesus to heal him.  Discuss what else he could have done instead: he could have felt that his problem wasn’t big enough to bother Jesus with.  He could have felt that he wasn’t important enough to get Jesus’ attention.  He could have felt that there are others who may also need to ask Jesus.  He could have felt embarrassed to ask Jesus in front of so many people.  He could have felt that other people may not like him to cause a commotion in public.

But Bartimaeus did not do any of these things and he was healed.  Discuss how Bartimaeus must have felt after he was healed.  Parallel all these discussions with how the volunteer in the earlier game felt.

Discuss how we should be praying to God in our nightly prayers tonight.  How could we be poor in the spirit like Bartimaeus and yet, persistent like he was?  Surely we must have things that we would like to ask Jesus for.