14. Mass Readings Challenge & Comfort

We first allow God to speak to us. We get a passage at Mass from the Old and New Testaments and from the Gospels. In between the first two readings there is a responsorial psalm. Before the Gospel there is a verse, sandwiched most of the year between alleluias.

When telling the parable of a man who was beaten by robbers and avoided by all save one stranger, Jesus hits his listeners between the eyes with the mention that this man was a Samaritan. When he healed ten lepers, only one returned to show gratitude, again he was a Samaritan, a people that Pharisees and orthodox Jews often despised. Such passages illustrate the challenge of the Scriptures. (Many of us have taken comfort from them, too.)