Sunday 23 February 2020
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Parish Masses at 8.30am 10.15am and 6pm.
at St. Peter's Catholic Church SS9 4BX
Home to the Southend Ordinariate Mission
Tuesday 25th February Low Mass in the Oedinariate Use 7.30pm
Confessions before Lent - Tuesday 25th February 10am & 6pm
Sunday 1st March 12 Noon Sung Ordinariate Use Mass
ASH WEDNESDAY Masses 9.30am & 7.30pm
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Holy as God: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Leviticus 19:1–2, 17–18
Psalm 103:1–4, 8, 10, 12–13
1 Corinthians 3:16–23
Matthew 5:38–48
We are called to the holiness of God. That is the extraordinary claim made in both the First Reading and Gospel this Sunday.
Yet how is it possible that we can be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect?
Jesus explains that we must be imitators of God as His beloved children (Ephesians 5:1–2).
As God does, we must love without limit—with a love that does not
distinguish between friend and foe, overcoming evil with good (see Romans 12:21).
Jesus Himself, in His Passion and death, gave us the perfect example of the love that we are called to.
He offered no resistance to the evil—even though He could have
commanded twelve legions of angels to fight alongside Him. He offered
His face to be struck and spit upon. He allowed His garments to be
stripped from Him. He marched as His enemies compelled Him to the Place
of the Skull. On the cross He prayed for those who persecuted Him (see Matthew 26:53–54, 67; 27:28, 32; Luke 23:34).
In all this He showed Himself to be the perfect Son of God. By His
grace, and through our imitation of Him, He promises that we too can
become children of our heavenly Father.
God does not deal with us as we deserve, as we sing in this week’s
Psalm. He loves us with a Father’s love. He saves us from ruin. He
forgives our transgressions.
He loved us even when we had made ourselves His enemies through our
sinfulness. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (see Romans 5:8).
We have been bought with the price of the blood of God’s only Son (see 1 Corinthians 6:20).
We belong to Christ now, as St. Paul says in this week’s Epistle. By
our baptism, we have been made temples of His Holy Spirit.
And we have been saved to share in His holiness and perfection. So
let us glorify Him by our lives lived in His service, loving as He
loves.
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