＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

 Wisdom of Solomon 7: 22b-8:1

 Because Wisdom, who designed them all, taught me.

In her is a spirit that is intelligent, saintly, unique, manifold, sub­tle, active, concise, pure and lu­cid. It cannot corrupt, loves what is good and nothing can restrain it;   it is beneficent, loving humankind, stead­fast, dependable, calm though almighty. It sees everything and pe­netrates all spirits, however intel­ligent, subtle and pure they may be.

Wisdom, in fact, surpasses in mo­bility all that moves, and being so pure pervades and permeates all things. She is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; nothing impure can enter her.   She is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of God’s action and an image of his goodness.

She is but one, yet Wisdom can do all things and, herself unchanging, she renews all things. She enters holy souls, making them prophets and friends of God,   for God loves only those who live with Wisdom. She is indeed more beautiful than the sun and surpasses all the constellations; she outrivals light,   for light gives way to night, but evil cannot prevail against Wisdom.

Wisdom displays her strength from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things rightly.

 

Ps   119  Your word is for ever,O Lord.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

Luke 17: 20-25

The Pharisees asked Jesus when the king­­­­dom of God was to come. He answered, “The kingdom of God is not like something you can observe   and say of it: ‘Look, here it is! or See, there it is! for the kingdom of God is within you.”

And Jesus said to his disciples, “The time is at hand when you will long to see one of the glorious days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it.  Then people will tell you: ‘Look there! Look here!’ Do not go, with them, do not follow them.   As lightning flashes from one end of the sky to the other, so will it be with the Son of Man; but first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

 

Gospel Reflection：

“THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU.”

We all heard of the term new evangelization Although this concept was coined only by John Paul Ⅱ, this idea started with Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi and picked up by Benedict XVI. Even Pope Francis joins his predecessors by tackling the challenge of New Evangelization in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. New evangelization primarily looks into de-Christianized and secularized societies.

As Pope Benedict  XVI puts it, this is bringing the gospel “to those regions awaiting the first evangelization and to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization.”

The call of the new evangelization is our shared call. Pope John Paul in Redemptoris Missio affirmed that Those who are incorporated in the Catholic Church ought to sense their privilege and for that very reason their greater obligation of bearing witness to the faith and to the Christian life as a service to their brothers and sisters and as a fitting response to God (11).

But the call to this mission requires that our own faith should be deep and that the kingdom of God has taken its roots profoundly in our lives.