First Reading
Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40
1. Moses heard the voice of God from a burning bush. How about you? Where do you hear the voice of God? In immigrant children being dropped over the U.S. border wall … starving people … doctors and nurses … people working for eco-justice … Pope Francis … nature … novels … music ... your heart?
2. Moses couldn’t imagine anything comparable to the love that God had shown his people. What, in God’s plan of salvation, was Moses not aware of? Jesus? The Holy Spirit?
Second Reading
Romans 8: 14-17
1. Besides revealing God’s relationship to us as endless and continually new, “the Spirit bears witness with our spirit.” How do you think your prayers of thanksgiving, petition and worship are changed when the Spirit takes them and bears witness with them?
2. “We are … heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” What do we inherit with and in Christ? Which treasures do you want the most? Which do you need the most?
Gospel
Matthew 28:16-20
1. What do you think Pope Francis means when he says that the Trinity is wholly at the service of the world, which he wishes to save and re-create?
God loves the world, despite its sins; God loves each one of us even when we make mistakes and distance ourselves from him. God the Father loves the world so much that, in order to save it, he gives what is most precious to him: his only-begotten Son, who gives his life for humanity, rises again, returns to the Father and together with him sends the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is therefore Love, wholly at the service of the world, which he wishes to save and re-create. … And it would be beautiful if we felt that we were loved. “God loves me!”
2. Does the Holy Spirit draw us into the same dynamism of the Trinity which is love, mutual service and sharing? Could people drawn into this dynamism help re-create the world?
