Third Monday in Ordinary Time

Monday, January 27, 2025

Third Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Angela Merici, Virgin

Heb 9:15, 24-28/Mk 3:22-30 (Lectionary #317)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012725.cfm

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Mark tells us that next some “scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘By the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’” The official teachers of the Pharisee party thought Jesus was not just crazy but possessed!

Jesus responds with two teachings. First, he says, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot stand.  So if in me Satan is casting out Satan he is finished.” And second, “No one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up.” Jesus must be stronger than the devil, not in league with him.

So much for the argument of the scribes. But Jesus gives a third teaching addressed to all of us: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never find forgiveness.” What is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”?

Some people sin just out of weakness, or because they have been malformed by their culture. The truth is, most objections against the Catholic Church are objections against things she does not believe or teach — or against things her least representative members do, which can include priests and bishops! There is hope for people who “blaspheme” — or rail — against truth that has been presented to them distorted by the flawed example of humans. If nothing else, we can hope that when they die God will show them the truth— the things they misunderstood, the distortions they absorbed, the counter-productive responses they made to situations they found themselves in — and say to them, “This is the real truth This is what I really am. Do you accept me now?” If that is the case, their “final judgment” about God will be their Final Judgment, even if they make it after the medical profession has pronounced them legally dead. Christians believe people are “dead” when God says they are; not when the doctors do!

But some people may actually embrace evil as good, and abhor good as evil. Some reject the inspirations and enlightenment of God himself. God will forgive them if they repent, but there is less hope that they will. They are already blocking God’s best shot.

Mark tells us Jesus said this “because they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” If people can’t tell the difference between the devil and God himself, they are in serious trouble. 

Initiative: Accept both what is human and what is divine in your experience of the Church and the Church’s ministry, but do not confuse one with the other.

A Birdseye View

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10/1 Cor 12:12-30 or 12:12-14, 27/Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21 (Lectionary # 69)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012625.cfm

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If someone asked you, “What, in a nutshell, is the Good News?” what would you say? Suppose we put it differently: “What is so good about being a Christian?” Have you ever thought about it? Do you see the value of condensing the Good News into a few clear and memorable gifts, promises and commitments?

The Entrance Antiphon urges us to “sing a new song to the Lord.” What is new and different about Christianity? The verse mentions five things. “Truth and beauty surround him; he lives in holiness and glory.” We learn his truth as disciples, students of the Word made flesh. We see the beauty of his truth when it is embodied in the prophetic witness of actions and lifestyle. He shows us this by living in us, his body on earth, who have “become Christ” by Baptism. His holiness appeared above all when as Priest and Victim he gave his “flesh for the life of the world” on Calvary. His “glory” was previewed in his resurrection and will be fully revealed when he comes again in triumph as King at the end of time.

The “new song” of response to the Good News has five verses: we receive his life when we “become Christ” at Baptism. We learn his truth as disciples. We bear witness to him as prophets. We minister as “priests in the Priest” through Baptism. We work for his glory as stewards of his kingship. These five are the promises and commitments of our Baptism.

In the Opening Prayer(s) we ask God to use “our efforts” to “bring the human race to unity and peace.” But this is no ordinary unity and peace.  The goal and fruit of Christianity is a mystery. God is “greater than the human heart.” So we ask that our “faults and weaknesses” will not “obscure the vision” and cause us to settle for less than the full mystery of the “peace you have promised.” The Good News holds up to us something that “exceeds the furthest expression of our human longing.”

If all we had were…

In Nehemiah 8:2-10 we get some idea of how much it meant to the Jews to be given laws to live by that came from God himself. Imagine what life on earth would be like without them. Suppose we knew, as every normal human person, nation and culture has known throughout the millions of years of human existence, that the universe owes its existence to some awesome Being, but did not know for sure what that Being expects of us. Or how to get the most out of life. Suppose there was no “operator’s manual.” Where would that leave us?

“Fulfilled in your hearing”

In Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21, Jesus gives an outline of the Good News. He came:

1. “To bring good news to the poor”: The Good News for our being is the gift of grace, the gift of divine life. Paul summed it up as the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Because we died “in Christ” and rose in him, our sins are annihilated and we have become a “new creation.” By Baptism we “became Christ.” We are sent and empowered to “save” and lift up everything in the world that has veered off to destructiveness, distortion, mediocrity or meaninglessness. The Messiah is alive and active in us.

2. “To proclaim liberty to captives”: The Good News for our intellect is the gift of faith. Our minds have been taken captive by false worldviews and schools of thought. Our culture has left us confined in a “low-ceiling world,” walled off from seeing the full dimensions of God’s being, truth and goodness, and of our human dignity and destiny. Jesus promises “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). He invites those who “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79) to come out and be his disciples.

3. “Recovery of sight to the blind”: This is Good News for our power of perception — and by extension, of memory. Spiritual blindness is not an intellectual problem, nor something imposed from outside of us. It is an interior hardness of heart, an unwillingness even to look at truth. The worst blindness is that of the Pharisees in every age, who find their security in blind obedience to laws. With chosen tunnel vision they absolve themselves from the risk and responsibility of looking at the goal of the law and making personal decisions about how to achieve it in particular situations. Jesus frees us from this spiritual handicap by calling us to look for ways to make constant changes in our lifestyle, to make everything bear witness to his values. This draws us beyond mere law-observance and opens us to new and creative insights into ways of living the Gospel more authentically. This is the gift and meaning of our baptismal consecration as prophets.

4. “To let the oppressed go free”: The Good News for our will is the gift of love. Until Jesus came the only escape from oppression was through violence fired by hatred. Jesus taught us to resist nonviolently: to “endure evil with love” by accepting whatever cross the sin of the world drops on our shoulders and “loving back,” relying on no power but truth and love. We are to love our enemies and minister to them, even to sacrificing our lives. This call to ministry also brings us out of the self-imposed prison of selfishness that confines us within the narrowness of self-interest. By our baptismal consecration as “priests in the Priest” we are joined to Jesus, Victim and Priest, and freed to give our “flesh for the life of the world.

5. “To announce a year of favor from the Lord”: The Good News for the meaning in life we seek through activity is the gift of hope. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). Jesus is alluding to the jubilee year in Judaism, when debts were cancelled, land and possessions returned to their original owners, and slaves were freed. God commanded this first as Creator: “The land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” By creation humans are only God’s stewards, charged to take care of his creation (Genesis 1:26-28). God also speaks as God of the Covenant: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan…. [Any slaves you have] are my servants…. You shall not rule over them with harshness, but shall fear your God….They and their children with them shall go free in the jubilee year” (Leviticus 25:8-55). Jesus is saying that the “reign of God” has begun, and the Good News is that we are consecrated by Baptism to announce peace and justice on earth as “kings,” or stewards of his kingship.

Who We Are

In 1Corinthians 12: 12-30 Paul is keeping his focus on the central theme of all of his writings: “the mystery hidden throughout the ages but now revealed to his saints…. this mystery, which is Christ in you” (Colossians 1:26). That, for Paul, is the Good News in a nutshell. And because of it. he says, there should be “no dissension within the body,” no jealousy, no special preferences, but “all  the members should have the same care for one another.” There are different gifts, functions. ministries and roles in the body of Christ, but none is “higher” or “lower,” because they are all functions of the same body and the body is a single whole. So “if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all share its joy.” John Donne’s poem “No Man is an Island” captures this:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The Good News is that no one has more or less dignity. There is only one dignity: being the Body of Christ, and all share in it equally. Nor does anyone suffer alone. All pain is the pain of all. “All, though many, are one body.” If we truly live this out, we will evangelize the world!

Insight: Can you sum up the Good News in five sentences? Five words? 

Initiative: Adopt the WIT prayer: “Lord do this with me, do this in me, do this through me.” 

The Conversion of Saint Paul

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Second Week in Ordinary Time

Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle

Acts 22:3-16 or Acts 9:1-22/Mk 16:15-18 (Lectionary #519) 

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012525.cfm

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Acts 22:3-16 tells us of the encounter with Jesus that ruled all Paul did, said and wrote as an apostle. This same encounter should also shape everything we say, do and are. If we have heard the Good News.

Like us, Paul never saw the historical Jesus. The Jesus who spoke to him on the road was the same risen Jesus who speaks to us in prayer and through the Spirit in our hearts. And Paul did not see him; just a “great light from heaven.” And he “heard a voice.” The light he saw with his senses was not as real or as great at the light of faith given to us at Baptism. And the voice he heard was no more the voice of God than the voice that speaks to us through the Scriptures. In other words, although Paul met Jesus in a different way, his encounter was not more real than ours is. So our encounter with Jesus should have the same effect.

Paul was enlightened, yes. From that moment he knew two things that ruled the rest of his life: 1. He was sent. 2. Christians are “in” Christ and Christ is in them. The Jesus Paul met on the road is present in and identified with every person who becomes a member of his body by faith and Baptism. The Jesus Paul preached was the Jesus of mystery, the Jesus who is the “head of the body, the Church; the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:8). He is the Jesus into whose death and resurrection we were incorporated by Baptism. Paul was perfectly clear about his mission. It was to proclaim:

the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known… the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:26-27).

Don’t we know all this? Don’t we know it just as certainly as Paul? The light of faith in us is just as much a “great light from heaven” as the one Paul saw. But he was blinded by his until, like us, he presented himself to the Church and was baptized (Acts 9:17-19). And don’t we know we are sent to proclaim what we have seen? Pope Paul VI said, “The Church exists to evangelize.” We are the Church.

In Mark 16:15-18 Jesus tells his apostles, and through them every member of his body on earth, “Go out to all the world and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation.”

“The whole creation” means every place where people are: at home, at work, at sports events and parties, on dates and business trips, in professional life and politics. This is the “apostolate of the laity” who “live in the midst of the world and its concerns [and so] are called by God to exercise their apostolate in the world like leaven” (Vatican II, Lay Apostolate, no. 2).

These “signs” will make their witness credible: They will be immune to the “poison” they drink in daily from the culture, speak a “different language” than their peer group, and “heal” situations they have a hand in. In other words, they will be different.

Initiative: Acknowledge your encounter with Jesus. Proclaim what you know.