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CCC 2302-2306: Christ our peace
CCC 2437-2442: Witnesses and workers for peace and justice
CCC Cross Reference:
Ps 23:5 1293
Eph 2:14 2305; Eph 2:16 2305
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Reading 1
Jer 23:1-6
Woe to the shepherds
who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture,
says the LORD.
Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel,
against the shepherds who shepherd my people:
You have scattered my sheep and driven them away.
You have not cared for them,
but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.
I myself will gather the remnant of my flock
from all the lands to which I have driven them
and bring them back to their meadow;
there they shall increase and multiply.
I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them
so that they need no longer fear and tremble;
and none shall be missing, says the LORD.
Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David;
as king he shall reign and govern wisely,
he shall do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah shall be saved,
Israel shall dwell in security.
This is the name they give him:
"The LORD our justice."
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 23:1-3, 3-4, 5, 6
R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
He guides me in right paths
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
with your rod and your staff
that give me courage.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Reading II
Eph 2:13-18
Brothers and sisters:
In Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have become near by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, he who made both one
and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh,
abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims,
that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two,
thus establishing peace,
and might reconcile both with God,
in one body, through the cross,
putting that enmity to death by it.
He came and preached peace to you who were far off
and peace to those who were near,
for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
Gospel
Mk 6:30-34
The apostles gathered together with Jesus
and reported all they had done and taught.
He said to them,
"Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while."
People were coming and going in great numbers,
and they had no opportunity even to eat.
So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.
People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.
They hastened there on foot from all the towns
and arrived at the place before them.
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things.
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
First reading Jeremiah 23:1-6
‘Doom for the shepherds who allow the flock of my pasture to be destroyed and scattered – it is the Lord who speaks! This, therefore, is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says about the shepherds in charge of my people: You have let my flock be scattered and go wandering and have not taken care of them.
Right, I will take care of you for your misdeeds – it is the Lord who speaks! But the remnant of my flock I myself will gather from all the countries where I have dispersed them, and will bring them back to their pastures: they shall be fruitful and increase in numbers. I will raise up shepherds to look after them and pasture them; no fear, no terror for them any more; not one shall be lost – it is the Lord who speaks!
‘See, the days are coming – it is the Lord who speaks –
when I will raise a virtuous Branch for David,
who will reign as true king and be wise,
practising honesty and integrity in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel dwell in confidence.
And this is the name he will be called:
The-Lord-our-integrity.’
Responsorial Psalm:
Psalm 22(23):1-6
The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.
The Lord is my shepherd;
there is nothing I shall want.
Fresh and green are the pastures
where he gives me repose.
Near restful waters he leads me,
to revive my drooping spirit.
The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.
He guides me along the right path;
he is true to his name.
If I should walk in the valley of darkness
no evil would I fear.
You are there with your crook and your staff;
with these you give me comfort.
The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.
You have prepared a banquet for me
in the sight of my foes.
My head you have anointed with oil;
my cup is overflowing.
The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.
Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me
all the days of my life.
In the Lord’s own house shall I dwell
for ever and ever.
The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.
Second reading Ephesians 2:13-18
In Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For he is the peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in his own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law. This was to create one single New Man in himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the cross, to unite them both in a single Body and reconcile them with God: in his own person he killed the hostility. Later he came to bring the good news of peace, peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near at hand. Through him, both of us have in the one Spirit our way to come to the Father.
Gospel Mark 6:30-34
The apostles rejoined Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. Then he said to them, ‘You must come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while’; for there were so many coming and going that the apostles had no time even to eat. So they went off in a boat to a lonely place where they could be by themselves. But people saw them going, and many could guess where; and from every town they all hurried to the place on foot and reached it before them. So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.
Readings and Commentary from the Navarre Bible
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
From: Jeremiah 23:1-6
[1] "Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!" says the LORD. [2] Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: "You have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD. [3] Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. [4] I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, says the LORD.
The future king
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[5] "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. [6] In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: 'The Lord is our righteousness'."
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Commentary:
23:1-8. The previous chapters (21:1-22:30) announced the exile to come, and come it did, on account of the kings' failure to keep the Covenant. The kings, in chronological order, were the subject of the various oracles. Now Jeremiah, looking to the future, uses the image of shepherds to proclaim a new era in which God himself will be the shepherd-ruler of his people (vv. 1-4); he will raise up a new king who will govern justly (vv. 5-6); and the new situation that will develop after the return from exile will be more glorious than that of the period after the exodus from Egypt (vv. 7-8). Bl. John Paul II refers to this oracle to stress that the new people of God, the Church, will always have pastors to guide it: "In these words from the prophet Jeremiah, God promises his people that he will never leave them without shepherds to father them together and guide them: 'I will set shepherds over them [my sheep] who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed' (Jer 23:4). The Church, the people of God, constantly experiences the reality of the prophetic message and continues joyfully to thank God for it. She knows that Jesus Christ himself is the living, supreme and definitive fulfillment of God's promise: 'I am the good shepherd' (Jn 10:11). He, 'the great shepherd of the sheep' (Heb 13:20), entrusted to the apostles and their successors the ministry of shepherding God's flock (cf. Jn 21:15ff; 1 Pet 5:2)" (Pastores dabo vobis, 1).
23:5-6. The promise of the new king is the key to understanding Jeremiah's thought. The passage is repeated (with slight variations) in 33:15-16. "The days are coming", a phrase often found in oracles of salvation, is a reference to the End time, but sometimes it can mean the return from exile. The "righteous branch", meaning the future king, will eventually become a technical term for the Messiah, in both Zechariah (Zech 3:8; 6:12) and the New Testament (cf. Lk 1:78): he is "righteous", he shall "execute…righteousness" and he will be called "the Lord in our righteousness". All this insistence on justice and right indicates, firstly, that Jeremiah wants to justify the accession of Zedekiah, whose name means "justice of the Lord"; but he also wants to show that the future Messiah will be David's legal, legitimate descendant: the Lord guarantees this by calling him a "righteous" that is "legitimate", branch. And the main message, of course, is that in the new era justice will reign and there will be peace and security; it will be the time of definitive salvation.
Thus, Jeremiah is proclaiming the coming of a descendant of David who will bring about a new era of prosperity and salvation. Jeremiah is the last prophet, in order of time, to proclaim a Messiah King, an intermediary between God and his people. At the same time, he is also promising direct intervention by God.
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From: Ephesians 2:13-18
Reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in Christ
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[13] But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. [14] For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, [15] by abolishing, in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, [16] and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. [17] And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; [18] for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
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Commentary:
11-22. What is the significance of the calling of the Gentiles to the Church? Their previous situation, separated from Christ (vv. 11-12), has undergone radical change as a result of the Redemption Christ achieved on the Cross: that action has, on the one hand, brought the two peoples together (made peace between them: vv. 13-15) and, on the other, it has reconciled them with God, whose enemy each was (w. 16-18). The Redemption has given rise to the Church, which St Paul here describes as a holy temple built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (vv. 19-22).
14-15. "He is our peace": through his death on the cross Christ has abolished the division of mankind into Jews and Gentiles. The Gentiles, who had been far away from God, from his covenant and from his promises (cf. v. 12), are now on a par with the Jews: they share in the New Covenant that has been sealed with the blood of Christ. That is why he is "our peace". In him all men find that solidarity they yearned for, because, through his obedient self-sacrifice unto death, Christ has made up for the disobedience of Adam, which had been the cause of human strife and division (cf. Gen 3-4). "Christ, the Word made flesh, the prince of peace, reconciled all men to God by the cross, and, restoring the unity of all in one people and one body, he abolished hatred in his own flesh (cf. Eph 2:16; Col 1:20-22) and, having been lifted up through his resurrection, he poured forth the Spirit of love into the hearts of men" (Vatican II, "Gaudium Et Spes", 78).
God's plan to attract mankind to himself and to reestablish peace included the election of the Jewish people, from whom the Messiah would be born; and in that Messiah all the nations of the world would be blessed (cf. Gen 11:3). He is in fact called "prince of peace" (Is 9:6; cf. Mic 5:4). However, many Jews had come to regard their election in such a narrow-minded way that they saw it as creating a permanent barrier between themselves and the Gentiles. Some rabbis of our Lord's time despised and even hated the Gentiles. The separation between the two peoples was reflected in the temple wall which divided the court of the Gentiles from the rest of the sacred precincts (cf. Acts 21:28). The real roots of the separation lay in Jewish pride at being the only ones to have the Law of God and keep it by scrupulous attention to countless legal niceties.
By his death on the cross Jesus Christ has broken down the barriers dividing Jews from Gentiles and also those which kept man and God apart. St Paul says this metaphorically when he says that Christ "has broken down the dividing wall," referring to the wall in the temple. But he is not resorting to metaphor when he says that Christ abolished "in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances". Christ, through his obedience to the Father unto death (cf. Phil 2:8), has brought the Law to fulfillment (cf. Mt 5:17 and note on Mt 5:17-19); he has become, for all mankind, the way to the Father. The Law of the Old Testament, although it was something good and holy, also created an unbridgeable gap between God and man, because man, on his own, was incapable of keeping the Law (cf. notes on Gal 3:19-20; 3:21-25; and Acts 15:7-11). Christ, through grace, has created a new man who can keep the very essence of the Law – obedience and love.
The "new man" of whom St Paul speaks here is Jesus Christ himself, who stands for both Jews and Gentiles, because he is the new Adam, the head of a new mankind: the "new man", St Thomas Aquinas explains, "refers to Christ himself, who is called 'new man' because of the new form his conception took, ...the newness of the grace which he extends ..., and the new commandment which he brings" ("Commentary on Eph, ad loc.").
By taking human nature and bringing about our redemption, the Son of God has become the cause of salvation for all, without any distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (cf. Gal 3:28): only through Christ's grace can peace be achieved and all differences overcome. Bl. John XXIII explains this in his encyclical "Pacem In Terris": peace is "such a noble and elevated task that human resources, even though inspired by the most praiseworthy goodwill, cannot bring it to realization alone. In order that human society may reflect as faithfully as possible the Kingdom of God, help from on high is necessary. For this reason, during these sacred days our supplication is raised with greater fervor towards him who by his painful passion and death overcame sin--the root of discord and the source of sorrows and inequalities--and by his blood reconciled mankind to the Eternal Father: 'For he is our peace, who has made us both one'."
16. Through his death on the cross, Jesus Christ reestablishes man's friendship with God, which sin had destroyed. Pope John Paul suggests that "With our eyes fixed on the mystery of Golgotha we should be reminded always of that 'vertical' dimension of division and reconciliation concerning the relationship between man and God, a dimension which in the eyes of faith always prevails over the 'horizontal' dimension, that is to say, over the reality of division between people and the need for reconciliation between them. For we know that reconciliation between people is and can only be the fruit of the redemptive act of Christ, who died and rose again to conquer the kingdom of sin, to reestablish the covenant with God and thus break down the dividing wall which sin had raised up between people" ("Reconciliatio Et Paenitentia", 7). Redemption therefore brings about our reconciliation with God (cf. Rom 5:10-2 Cor 5:18) and it affects everyone, Gentiles as well as Jews, and all creation (cf. Col 1:20). This reconciliation is achieved in the physical body of Christ sacrificed on the cross (cf. Col 1:22) and also in his mystical body, in which Christ convokes and assembles all whom he has reconciled with God by his redemptive sacrifice (cf. 1 Cor 12:13ff). The words "in one body" can be taken in two senses--as referring to Christ's physical body on the cross and to his mystical body, the Church.
The sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, "the memorial of the death and resurrection of the Lord, in which the Sacrifice of the cross is forever perpetuated, is the summit and the source of all worship and Christian life. By means of it the unity of the body of Christ is signified and brought about, and the building up of the body of Christ is perfected" (Code of Canon Law, can. 897).
18. Prior to Christ's coming, man was excluded from the Father's house, living like a slave rather than a son (cf. Gal 4:1-5). But in the fullness of time God sent his Son to give us the spirit of sonship that enables us to call God our Father (cf. note on Rom 8:15-17).
"The way that leads to the throne of grace would be closed to sinners had Christ not opened the gate. That is what he does: he opens the gate, leads us to the Father, and by the merits of his passion obtains from the Father forgiveness of our sins and all those graces God bestows on us" (St Alphonsus, "Thoughts on the Passion", 10, 4).
Here we see the part played by the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation decreed by the Father and carried out by the Son. The words "in one Spirit", as well as identifying the access route to the Father, also imply two basic facts: on the one hand, that the mysterious union which binds Christians together is caused by the action of the Holy Spirit who acts in them; on the other, that this same Holy Spirit, inseparable from the Son (and from the Father) because they constitute the same divine nature, is always present and continually active in the Church, the mystical body of Christ. "When the work which the Father gave the Son to do on earth (cf. In 17:4) was accomplished, the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost in order that he might continually sanctify the Church, and that, consequently, those who believe might have access through Christ in one Spirit to the Father (cf. Eph 2:18). [...] Hence the universal Church is seen to be 'a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit' (cf. St Cyprian, "De Oratione Dominica", 23)" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 4).
Christ has brought about salvation, and, to enable all to appropriate that salvations he calls them to form part of his body, which is the Church. The Holy Spirit is, as it were, the soul of this mystical body; it is he who gives it life and unites all its members. "If Christ is the head of the Church, the Holy Spirit is its soul: 'As the soul is in our body, so the Holy Spirit is in the body of Christ, that is, the Church' (St Augustine, "Sermon 187")" (Leo XIII, "Divinum Illud Munus", 8). The Holy Spirit is inseparably united to the Church, for St Irenaeus says, "where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and the fullness of grace" ("Against Heresies", III, 24).
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From: Mark 6:30-34
The Apostles Return
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[30] The Apostles returned to Jesus, and told Him all that they had done and taught. [31] And He said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. [32] And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.
First Miracles of the Loaves
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[33] Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot from the towns, and got there ahead of them. [34] As He landed He saw a great throng, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things.
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Commentary:
30-31. We can see here the intensity of Jesus' public ministry. Such was His dedication to souls that St. Mark twice mentions that the disciples did not even have time to eat (cf. Mark 3:20). A Christian should be ready to sacrifice his time and even his rest in the service of the Gospel. This attitude of availability will lead us to change our plans whenever the good of souls so requires.
But Jesus also teaches us here to have common sense and not to go to such extremes that we physically cannot cope: "The Lord makes His disciples rest, to show those in charge that people who work or preach cannot do so without breaks" (St. Bede, "In Marci Evangelium Expositio, in loc."). "He who pledges himself to work for Christ should never have a free moment, because to rest is not to do nothing: it is to relax in activities which demand less effort" (St. J. Escriva, "The Way", 357).
34. Our Lord had planned a period of rest, for Himself and His disciples, from the pressures of the apostolate (Mark 6:31-32). And He has to change His plans because so many people come, eager to hear Him speak. Not only is He not annoyed with them: He feels compassion on seeing their spiritual need. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). They need instruction and our Lord wants to meet this need by preaching to them. "Jesus is moved by hunger and sorrow, but what moves Him most is ignorance" (St. J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 109).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
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