'I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.' Sunday Reflections, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

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The Apostle Paul in Prison
Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]
Yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus . . . (Philemon 9; Second Reading).

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA) 

Gospel Luke 14:25-33 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India).

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

 

Léachtaí i nGaeilge 


Manuscript of St Paul's Letter to Philemon 
French Miniaturist [Web Gallery of Art]


Second Reading (Philemon 9-10, 12-17)

Yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus—I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.


Continue at Bangor to Bobbio.

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