Our Sunday Reflections

CLICK HERE for the Audio recording of the Readings of
January 26th, 2020.
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Sunday of the Word of God

CLICK HERE for the Readings of January 26th, 2020.
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Sunday of the Word of God

Welcome the Light into your Life by celebrating and receiving the Eucharist!

Sunday, January 26th, 2020.  Third Sunday of Ordinary Time.  Sunday of the Word of God

 

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light...
Isaiah 9:1 

A good friend recently told me that at his family table, when the family gathers be it at an ordinary meal or especially when the larger family and relatives gather on different occasions, there are topics that shall not be discussed ( off limits) because passions get raw, divisions, conflicts or big arguments always come up.
How this situation may not be uncommon to many today. Today, we all seem to be grouped up in camps or ‘tribes’.  Our politics does that to us, our faith and religion, etc.  Experts tell us that we live in a much fractured society.

The Christian community is not immune to the tendencies of the society in which we live. Many times this attitude of division and conflict is very alive in the Church too. Our mission however, the mission of Christ and the Gospel, is nothing close to this. The Christian life is about growing and building ‘the one body of Christ’.  Our's is to refuse and remove all that brings darkness, all that obscures the light of God to shine, and divisions do obscure.

The struggle to bring unity is as old as the Church itself.  Saint Paul, today in the second reading, writes to the Christian community of Corinth. He hears of stories of factions and rivalry among the church there. Some are calling themselves, Chloe’s people, others Apollos’ people, others Paul’s people, and still others Christ’s people.   He asks: is Christ divided?  There is also a poisonous infestation of ‘human eloquence’. People look not to Christ, but at the Charisms (smartness) of the messengers.  It is no longer about Christ or spirituality, but purely human reasoning.  Paul rebukes them and says they who remove Christ and the Cross (suffering) from the Gospel are preaching themselves and an inauthentic Christ.  The effort of unity and the witness of self-sacrifice for the whole is the best exemplar of who a Christian is.

It is no coincidence that in the Gospel we listen to today, Jesus begins his public ministry in a land of foreigners. The Land of Zelubun and Naphtali is the Galilee of the Gentiles. Right from the beginning,  Jesus preaches the Gospel, not exclusively to his own (the Jews), but anyone who is willing to allow God in their lives. The goal is unity. 
Jesus calls disciples who are ‘brothers’, not only in blood, but also people from the ‘band of fishermen’ whose bond must be deeply strong. (Unity!)  They are also ‘simple’ people far removed from the world of eloquence. Men that are single minded, ready to live everything they have ever known and follow Jesus only.  As we all know, they become men of great courage to bring the Gospel into the world.

Today’s disciple is you and I.  We must continue the work of the first disciples. This is a great responsibility we must take on with a dangerous unselfishness.  We must take on the mission to root out anything that sows darkness in our world and society. The things that sow divisions in people’s hearts.  The things that choke the lives of many who see no future (light) in their lives. Our lists can be as long as we can imagine (poverty, inequality, injustice, materialism, unfairness, indifference etc..).  In the words of the prophet Isaiah, we must see to it that: the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster, are smashed ( Isaiah 9:3) 

Have a Blessed week in the Lord!

Fr. Anthony



View the below video for another Sunday Reflection on the readings.