15thSunday B
Introduction: Today’s readings remind us of our Divine Adoption as God's children and of our call to preach the good news of Jesus by bearing witness to God’s love, mercy and salvation as revealed through Jesus. "God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world." (Ephesians 1: 4)
Scripture lessons: The first reading warns us that our witnessing mission will be rejected, as happened to the Old Testament prophets like Amos, He was ordered by Amaziah, the angry chief priest serving in the Northern Kingdom of Israel at Bethel, to take his prophesying back to his own country, the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Amos defended his prophetic role with courage, clarifying that it was not his choice but his God’s choice to elevate him from a shepherd and tree-dresser to a prophet. Like Amos, each one of us is chosen by God, through the mystery of divine adoption in Jesus, to become missionaries and to preach the “good news” by Christian witnessing.