29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
WISDOM 11:23 – 12:2
Lord, the whole world is like a grain of sand in your scales, like a morning dewdrop that falls upon the earth.
You have compassion on all, because you can do all things, you overlook people’s sins so that they may repent. You love all that exists and hate nothing of what you have made; for if you had hated anything, you would not have formed it.
And how could anything endure if you had not willed it? Or how could anything be preserved if not called forth by you?
But you spare all things, because they are yours, Lord, lover of life; for your imperishable spirit is in all things! Therefore you rebuke offenders with little and gentle rebukes; you warn those who accept correction, so that they may forsake their wickedness and believe in you, Lord.
We are already familiar with this book, a magnificent sample of the “Wisdom of Israel,” which is attributed to Solomon, the wisest of the wise in Israel. Composed in Alexandria in the time of Jesus or shortly before, it is the last book of the Old Testament and is composed as a treatise on political theology, a treatise on the great themes, justice, wisdom.
The passage we read today is a text of elevated inspiration, which develops a novel and profound idea: mercy and goodness as a manifestation of power, the clemency and forgiveness of God as a fruit of his omnipotence.
Omnipotence creates because it loves and loves all that it creates; therefore, its power is manifested in caring for creation and always giving a new opportunity to the one who sins. The name given to God is beautiful: “Lord, friend of life.”
2 THESSALONIANS 1:11 – 2:2
Brothers and sisters: we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
With regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.
Paul writes this second letter to the Thessalonians to counteract the ideas of some who, expecting the immediate arrival of the end times, were even refusing to work. The entire letter is an exposition on the end times, which for Paul are not imminent, and a series of exhortations to a pious life “according to the grace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.