31 October 2025 (Friday) / Ordinary Weekday / Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

31 October 2025 (Friday)

Ordinary Weekday.

Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time.

Readings from the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church:

First Reading: Romans 9: 1-5
Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 147: 12-15, 19-20
Alleluia: John 10: 27
Gospel: Luke 14: 1-6

First Reading: Romans 9: 1-5

I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost: That I have great sadness, and continual sorrow in my heart. For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the adoption as of children, and the glory, and the testament, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises: Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 147: 12-15, 19-20

R. (12) Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion. Because he hath strengthened the bolts of thy gates, he hath blessed thy children within thee.

R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

Who hath placed peace in thy borders: and filleth thee with the fat of corn. Who sendeth forth his speech to the earth: his word runneth swiftly.

R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

Who declareth his word to Jacob: his justices and his judgments to Israel. He hath not done in like manner to every nation: and his judgments he hath not made manifest to them. Alleluia.

R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

Alleluia: John 10: 27
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
27 The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice, says the Lord, I know them and they follow me.
(24. The Jews gathered round him and said, 'How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us openly.'
25. Jesus replied: I have told you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name are my witness;
26. but you do not believe, because you are no sheep of mine.
27. The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.
28. I give them eternal life; they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from my hand.
29. The Father, for what he has given me, is greater than anyone, and no one can steal anything from the Father's hand.
30. The Father and I are one)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel: Luke 14: 1-6

And it came to pass, when Jesus went into the house of one of the chief of the Pharisees, on the sabbath day, to eat bread, that they watched him. And behold, there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy. And Jesus answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying: Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? But they held their peace. But he taking him, healed him, and sent him away. And answering them, he said: Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a pit, and will not immediately draw him out, on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him to these things.

For our reflection today:

This very way “of living, attached to the law, distanced them from love and from justice: they were attentive to the law, they disregarded justice; they were attentive to the law, they overlooked love”. The Lord found these were “closed men, men too attached to the law”, or rather, too attached “to the letter of the law”, because “the law is love”. These men “always closed the doors of hope, of love, of salvation”. This is precisely “the path that Jesus teaches us, the exact opposite of that of the doctors of the law”. And “this path, from love to justice, leads to God”. Only “the path that goes from love to knowledge and to discernment, to complete fulfillment, leads to holiness, to salvation, to the encounter with Jesus”. “The other path”, however, “that of sticking only to the law, to the letter of the law, leads to closure, leads to selfishness”. And it leads “to the arrogance of considering ourselves just”, to that so-called “‘holiness’ of appearances”. Such that “Jesus says to these people: you like people to see you as men of prayer, of fasting”. This is only for appearances. And “this is why Jesus said to the people: do what they say, not what they do”, because “that mustn’t be done”. Jesus draws near: closeness is the very proof that we are “on the true path”. Because that is “the path that God has chosen in order to save us: closeness. He drew close to us, he made himself man”. And indeed, “God’s flesh is the sign; God’s flesh is the sign of true justice. God who made himself a man like one of us, and we who must make ourselves like the others, like the needy, like those who need our help”. (Pope Francis, Santa Marta, 31 October 2014)

Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
Most High Servant,
Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love (Blessed  and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)