There was a Jewish synagogue in Manhattan with an inscription carved into its stone facade. It read: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
That’s a quotation from our first reading, from the Prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament. In our city, our country, the world, those words stand as a rebuke and a challenge to all the forces of hatred and prejudice that have plagued the human community since biblical times.
Today’s reading from Isaiah puts before us a vision that remains a dream that predates even Isaiah and continues to inspire us decades after Martin Luther King invoked it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Jesus was taken up by this vision as well. In today’s gospel Jesus confronts the contradiction in his own day between the prevailing customs that surrounded him and the true calling he pursued in his ministry.
St. Paul, too, certainly embraced this same belief in God’s universal love. In his ministry, Paul had to struggle with the division between Jews and Gentiles, a division that has led in later history to antisemitism and reprehensible persecutions.
Our response in this Sunday’s liturgy is to join in the psalmist’s call: O God, let all the nations praise you.
—Walter Modrys SJ
This Sunday’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website.
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