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| Vision of Ezechiel - Raphael |
34th Week Ord Time Monday 2013
First Reading
Ezekiel36:16-36
Responsory Ez 11:19-20.19
I shall take away the heart of stone from
their bodies, and give them
a heart of flesh, so that they may walk in
my ways; + and they shall be my people,
and I will be their God.
V. I will give them a new heart, and put a
new spirit within them. + And they shall
...
Second Reading
From the treatise Teaching
Christianity by Saint Augustine
De Doctrina Christiana III,, 48-49: CCL 32, 108-110
The Lord said: I mean to display the holiness of my great name, which was profaned among the
nations, which you profaned in their midst, and the nations will know that I am
the Lord. Let the reader therefore take note of how a single people
will be superseded and all peoples added to it, for he continues: when, through you, I vindicate my holiness before their
eyes.
And I shall take you
out of the nations and gather you from every land, and bring you to your own land;
and I shall pour clean water over you, and cleanse you of all your idolatry, and
I shall purify you and give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
Now no one who looks into the matter can
doubt that this is a prophecy of the New Testament, which applies not only to
the remnant of that one people, of whom it is written elsewhere:
Even if Israel should
have as many descendants as there are grains of sand on the seashore, a remnant
will be saved, but also to the other nations according to the promise
made to their ancestors who are also our ancestors; and that it is also a
promise of those waters of regeneration that we now see imparted to all
nations. Thus the spiritual Israel is composed not of one people but of all
peoples, who were promised to the patriarchs in their offspring, which is
Christ.
This spiritual Israel is therefore
distinguished from the natural Israel, which consists of one nation, by newness
of grace, not nobility of descent, and by sentiments rather than race. But while
the sublime prophecy speaks of or to the natural Israel, it secretly refers to
the spiritual Israel, in such a way that while speaking of or to the latter it still
seems to be speaking of or to the former. It
does this not from an unfriendly attitude that begrudges us an understanding of
the scriptures, but rather, like a physician, to exercise our understanding.
Therefore, when the
Lord says: And I shall bring you to your own land, and a little later, more or less repeating himself, And you will live in the land that I gave to your ancestors, we ought to understand this not literally as though it referred to the
natural Israel, but spiritually, of the spiritual Israel. For the Church
without spot or wrinkle, gathered from every nation and destined to reign
eternally with Christ, is itself the land of the blessed, the land of the
living. We are to understand that it was given to our ancestors when it was
promised to them by the certain and immutable will of God; for what they
believed would be given in its own time was for them, on account of the
firmness of the promise and predetermination, the same as if it were already
given. Writing to Timothy about the grace given to the saints, the Apostle says:
not for any merit of ours but for his own purpose and by
the grace granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, and now revealed by
the coming of our Savior. He speaks of the grace as given
when those who were to receive it did not yet exist, because by the arrangement
and predetermination of God what was to take place in its own time, or, as the
Apostle says, be revealed, had already been accomplished.
Responsory Ez 36:23.25
I mean to display the holiness of my
great name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you have gone. + When through you I vindicate my holiness
before their eyes, then they will know that I am the Lord.
V. I shall pour clean water over you, and
cleanse you of all your defilement. + When
through you ...
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