Sunday, Marh 14, 2004
3rd Sunday of Lent

1st Reading: Ex 3:1-8, 13-15 (Listen to MP3 - Moses Vocation)

Moses pastured the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law, priest of Midian. One day he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the Mountain of God.

The Angel of Yahweh appeared to him by means of a flame of fire in the middle of a bush. Moses saw that although the bush was on fire it did not burn up. Moses thought, "I will go and see this amazing sight, why is the bush not burning up?"

Yahweh saw that Moses was drawing near to look, and God called to him from the middle of the bush, "Moses! Moses!" He replied, "Here I am." Yahweh said to him, "Do not come near; take off your sandals because the place where you are standing is holy ground." And God continued, "I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."

Moses hid his face lest his eyes look on God. Yahweh said, "I have seen the humiliation of my people in Egypt and I hear their cry when they are cruelly treated by their taskmasters. I know their suffering. I have come down to free them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a beautiful spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the territory of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites.

Moses answered God, "If I go to the Israelites and say to them: 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' they will ask me: 'What is his name?' What shall I answer them?"

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO AM. This is what you will say to the sons of Israel: 'I AM sent me to you." God then said to Moses, "You will say to the Israelites: 'YAHWEH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me.' That will be my name forever, and by this name they shall call upon me for all generations to come."

2nd Reading: 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12

Let me remind you, brothers and sisters, about our ancestors. All of them were under the cloud and all crossed the sea. All underwent the baptism of the land and of the sea to join Moses and all of them ate from the same spiritual manna and all of them drank from the same spiritual drink. For you know that they drank from a spiritual rock following them, and the rock was Christ. However, most of them did not please God, and the desert was strewn with their bodies.

All of this happened as an example for us, so that we might not become people of evil desires, as they did. Nor grumble as some of them did and were cut down by the destroying angel.

These things happened to them as an example, and they were written as a warning for us, as the last times come upon us. Therefore, if you think you stand, beware, lest you fall.

Gospel: Lk 13:1-9

One day some persons told Jesus what had occurred in the Temple: Pilate had Galileans killed and their blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus replied, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this? I tell you: no. But unless you change your ways, you will all perish as they did.
"And those eighteen persons in Siloah who were crushed when the tower fell, do you think they were more guilty than all the others in Jerusalem? I tell you: no. But unless you change your ways, you will all perish as they did."
And Jesus continued with this story, "A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard and he came looking for fruit on it, but found none. Then he said to the gardener: 'Look here, for three years now I have been looking for figs on this tree and I have found none. Cut it down, why should it use up the ground?' The gardener replied: 'Leave it one more year, so that I may dig around it and add some fertilizer; and perhaps it will bear fruit from now on. But if it doesn't, you can cut it down."

Commentary

GOD revealed his name to Moses: it is Yahweh. "That will be my name forever, and by this name they shall call upon me for all generations to come" (first reading). The Jews regarded this name as so holy that it should not be pronounced. In Hebrew, vowels are not written-only consonants. So the name was something like YWH. When they came to this name in the Scriptures they said "Adonai" instead (Lord). As time went by and no one had ever heard the word pronounced, no one knew any longer how it was meant to be pronounced! (Later, some people began to put to vowels of "Adonai" with the consonants of YWH, and it yielded-more or less-the artificial name "Jehovah".)

It's somehow a wonderful thing to have a name for God that must never be pronounced. The 13th-century mystic, Bl. Angela of Foligno, had a deep experience of God, and when her confessor asked her to tell him about it, she said, "Father, if you experienced what I experienced and then you had to stand in the pulpit to preach, you could only say to the people, 'My friends, go with God's blessing, because today I can say nothing to you about God.'"

Read also Sundays Into Silence: Do You Deserve What You Get?

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