The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Nehemiah 8:2-4,5-6,8-10  +  1 Corinthians 12:12-30 [or 12:12-14,27]  +  Luke 1:1-4;4:14-21

Now the body is not a single part, but many.

Today’s Gospel passage begins with the first four verses of Luke.   It’s from St. Luke’s prologue, in which he gives his rationale for you to listen to his Gospel account.

In this prologue, Luke mentions many members of the early Church.  But he only mentions one by name:  Theophilus, for whom St. Luke compiled his Gospel account.  Why does he mention these persons?  He mentions them in order to put his account of the Gospel within the context of the Church.

Sometimes you’ll hear of Christians—especially our separated brethren—calling Christianity a “religion of the book”, the “book” in question being the Bible.  However, while the Bible lies at the heart of our Christian Faith, Christianity does have a more primary foundation on this earth, and that is the Church.  Christianity is more truly a “religion of the Church” than it is a “religion of the Book”.  To be clear:  it’s not that the Bible is not at the heart of the Faith, but rather that we need to put the horse before the cart.

Jesus founded the Church, but He did not write the New Testament.  He left that job to the apostles.  The writing of the New Testament was part of the mission that began on the day of Pentecost.

Jesus founded His Church such that it’s marked by four essential qualities.  The Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.  It’s because the Church is apostolic that it could create the New Testament.

Of the 27 New Testament books, tradition considers 25 to have been authored by apostles.  The two books not authored by apostles are the Gospel accounts of Mark and Luke.  Yet even these two books have apostolic origins, for St. Mark was a disciple of St. Peter, and St. Luke was a disciple of St. Paul.

The Bible came from the Church, rather than the Church growing from the Bible.  Fifty-two days before Pentecost, at the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the ordained Priesthood.  All the fundamentals of our Catholic Church were already in existence decades before the first book of the New Testament was written.

It’s in light of this that St. Luke the Evangelist points out in his prologue that “just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed [the events of Jesus] down” by word of mouth, so Luke himself in turn decided to write his Gospel account “down in an orderly sequence”.  Why does St. Luke do this?  He tells us:  “so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.”

The Bible did not fall out of the sky, bound in leather.  The Holy Spirit, who is the primary author of Sacred Scripture, chose ordinary Christians in those first decades of the Church to pass on by word of mouth the words and works of Jesus.  In the twenty-first century, we’re blessed to have free access to Scripture, general literacy, and study guides written by faithful Catholic Scripture teachers.

Nonetheless, we should not forget that the original means of handing on the Good News was Christians sharing the Gospel by means of sharing their experiences of being disciples.  This process of oral tradition occurred many times before the first word of the New Testament was ever written down.

This process of the Word of God taking shape in the New Testament by means of tradition teaches us an important lesson about the Church.  Being a Christian is not just about “me and Jesus”.  Being a Christian means recognizing that our own lives are bound up with the other members of the Mystical Body of Christ.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, more often than not, flows into your life through the Communion of Saints:  that is, through your fellow members within the Body of Christ.  This is by God’s design.

God promises to give us always the grace we need to face any situation.  Unfortunately, sometimes we refuse His grace because we refuse the means by which He wills to give us that grace.  Within the body of the Church, God strengthens us through each other.  How many members of your parish family do you not yet know?  How many of them does God want to use as your brothers and sisters in Christ in order to bear His grace to you, and vice versa?

Thursday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Samuel 18:6-9;19:1-7  +  Mark 3:7-12
January 20, 2022

A large number of people followed from Galilee and from Judea.

At the end of today’s Gospel passage, after healing many persons, Jesus “warned [the unclean spirits] not to make Him known.”  Why does Jesus issue this warning?  “The Messianic Secret” is a phrase sometimes used to refer to the identity of Jesus, which He commands others—both friend and foe—not to reveal.  This warning or command comes from the nature of Jesus’ mission on earth.

God the Son was sent into our sinful world to become man, so that man might share in divine life.  In itself, this mission is not scandalous, even if it seems incredible.  However, the means by which God the Son would accomplish this mission did scandalize most of His friends and foes.  The seeming folly of the Cross caused many whom Jesus came to save to turn away from Him.

Whenever Jesus revealed His identity, it was to advance His mission.  If Jesus was to advance His mission, He needed to reveal the glory of the Cross.  In this sense, Jesus’ identity and mission were bound up together during His earthly life.  To reveal one was to reveal the other.  But to reveal His mission was to risk driving away persons He wished to save.  The purpose of the “Messianic Secret”, then, is the prudential progression of His self-revelation:  to save as many as possible from their own self-delusions of grandeur:  delusions by which man believes that he can save himself, and that salvation comes from any source other than carrying one’s cross in union with the crucified Christ.

Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Samuel 17:32-33,37,40-51  +  Mark 3:1-6
January 19, 2022

They watched Jesus closely to see if He would cure him on the Sabbath ….

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?”  His question is rhetorical.  The Pharisees understand Jesus’ question, and are very sure of His answer.  What they seem unsure of is whether Jesus would practice what He preached.

Keep in mind that today’s Gospel passage is from the third chapter of Mark.  In terms of the entire Gospel account, today’s Gospel passage is significant in that it’s Jesus’ first step towards Calvary.  There were three scenes in the second chapter where Jesus’ ministry provoked opposition.  But the last sentence of this passage is plain in announcing the plan of the Pharisees and Herodians “to put him to death.”

Jesus knew this, of course.  But He didn’t just accept the Cross as the price for practicing what He preached.  For us to think so would be putting the cart before the horse.  The Cross was Jesus’ vocation, the purpose for His descent from Heaven into our world of sin and death.  We can consider His three years of public ministry to be the prologue to or preparation for Holy Week.  We can consider those three years to be time during which Jesus invited others, by His words and deeds, to follow Him to Calvary.  But we need to be clear that the Cross was Jesus’ vocation.

Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time [Year II]
I Samuel 16:1-13  +  Mark 2:23-28

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

Today’s Gospel passage focuses on “‘the Son of Man [who] is lord even of the Sabbath.’ ”  To say that this Son of Man is lord “even” of the Sabbath is to point out that the meaning of this lordship stretches back to God’s creation of the universe.  The origin of the Sabbath is not the Third Commandment, but the events described in the first chapters of Genesis.  Jesus as the Son of Man is a lord who is divine and human.

But today’s First Reading and Responsorial speak of the human lord, King David.  David, like all the rightful kings of God’s People, ruled through the anointing that came from the Lord God.  Both the First Reading and the Responsorial speak of this anointing.  The First Reading links this anointing to the Power of the Holy Spirit:  the scriptural author notes that “from that day [of David’s anointing] on, the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David.”

In the ministry of the Old Testament kings, it was through the Holy Spirit that they acted as lords.  In the Nicene Creed we profess belief in the Holy Spirit, “who has spoken through the prophets.”  We might well also profess that this Holy Spirit has acted through the kings.  So also does He act in our own day:  ruling the Church through her ordained ministers, and ruling throughout the world in the daily lives of the lay faithful through their fidelity to their baptismal promises.

St. Anthony, Abbot
I Samuel 15:16-23  +  Mark 2:18-22
January 17, 2022

“… the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them ….”

Today’s Gospel passage might seem confusing to those who wish to be devout Christians.  Along with the contrast between Jesus and John, there is a contrast between feasting and fasting.  Jesus’ disciples in this passage do not fast because He is with them.  Should Christians today, then, take part in the discipline of fasting?  Or would fasting imply a denial of Jesus’ presence in our lives?

Jesus gives us the key to applying this contrast to our own lives as 21^st century disciples.  He explains, “the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.”  But what exactly is “that day”?  In one sense, we could consider “that day” to be Good Friday, when Jesus offered His life to death.

But in a broader sense, you and I need to understand “that day” as referring to the lives of all members of the Body of Christ here below in this vale of tears:  all of us who are members of the Church Militant here on earth.  It’s true that through Baptism and the other sacraments which we worthily receive, Christ dwells in our souls.  Through these sacraments He conforms us as members of His Mystical Body.  Yet as wayfaring pilgrims on earth, we are called to fast.  We fast because our share in Christ’s life is not full.  Only in Heaven may we feast fully on the life of God as members of the Church Triumphant.

Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Samuel 9:1-4,17-19; 10:1  +  Mark 2:13-17
January 15, 2022

All the crowd came to Him and He taught them.

In today’s Gospel passage from the second chapter of Mark, Jesus lays part of the foundation for his public ministry.  The events of today’s Gospel passage took place not long after Jesus’ Baptism, which inaugurated His public ministry.  The last sentence of the passage holds several clues for us about Jesus’ earthly mission.

“I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”   If we took these words at face value, we might consider “the righteous” to be the Pharisaic scribes who provoked these words from Jesus.  Obviously the scribes considered themselves righteous.  But like Jesus’ parables and so much else in His preaching, there is a paradox at work.  Jesus turns the popular notions of who is righteous and who is a sinner on their heads.

We could certainly not say that the tax collectors and other “sinners” were made righteous simply by the act of physically dining with Jesus.  But the physical proximity, and the closeness it suggests, symbolize that neither Jesus nor the “sinner” shuns the other’s company.  We cannot receive spiritual and moral righteousness from Jesus if we don’t spend time with Him, especially in the banquet of the Eucharist.  To shun him there would be to stand like the scribes, aloof and self-righteous.

Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Samuel 8:4-7,10-22  +  Mark 2:1-12
January 14, 2022

Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them ….

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus has many followers.  “Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them”.  This might seem to make Jesus a popular person, successful in ministry.  But within today’s Gospel passage there is a confusion of aims.  The aim of the friends of the paralytic was his physical healing.  Jesus does not dismiss their effort, but he sub-ordinates it to a higher aim:  the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus could have spent His three years of public ministry only working physical cures and raising people from the dead.  Had he stuck to these aims alone, He would have remained popular.  There’s no telling how successful He might have become in the eyes of the world!

But it was not for fifteen minutes of fame that Jesus came into our world of sin and death.  It was to die that He dwelt among us.  Give thanks that Jesus shows us how to put our mission above popularity, and how to put the aim of death before that of earthly life.

The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Isaiah 62:1-5  +  1 Corinthians 12:4-11  +  John 2:1-11

Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory ….

Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana reveals to us many important truths.  For example, the fact that there were six ceremonial water jars, each holding about 25 gallons, tells us that Jesus produced 150 gallons of wine for this wedding celebration, which in turn tells us that this… was a Catholic wedding.

It also tells us that Jesus was not a fundamentalist.  If Jesus had believed that drinking alcohol is inherently immoral, His first public miracle would not have been to turn water into wine at a wedding.  Instead, He would have turned 150 gallons of wine into water to prevent those at the wedding from enjoying themselves.  As the 20^th century essayist Hilaire Belloc declared:  “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine.  At least, I’ve always found it so:  Benedicamus Domino!”

However, besides this simple lesson about morality, there’s a deeper tradition revealed in this Gospel passage:  part of Tradition with a capital “T”.  It’s not a coincidence that Jesus’ first public miracle takes place at a wedding, and that this miracle teaches us about Marriage.

After all, it’s for the sake of a marriage that God the Father sent His Son to become man.  The Word became Flesh so that fallen man, by receiving this Word made Flesh, would enter into union with God.  St. Paul speaks of this union at length in his New Testament letters, describing the love of Jesus and His Church as a marriage.

Given this, it’s not a coincidence that the Fourth Commandment is about loving one’s parents.  Reflect on the Fourth Commandment’s place among the Ten in order to appreciate Jesus’ marriage to His Church, of which each of us is a member.

The Ten Commandments fall into two groups:  the first three command us to love God because God is Love.  The latter seven command us to love our neighbor as our self.  It’s not a coincidence that the first three are first, because it’s more important to love God than our neighbor.

This is so because our love has to be ordered.  If your love for God is not primary, then your love for your neighbors will be weak.  God intends, by the way He designed us, for His love to be the source of our love for our neighbors.

Similarly, our love for all our neighbors has to be ordered.  That is, there’s a reason why the Fourth Commandment is the first of the commandments to love our neighbors.  During your earthly life, as you journey among all your fellow human beings, if your love for your parents is not primary, then your love for any and all of your other neighbors—in childhood and adulthood—will be too weak to accomplish what God wishes for you to do.

What does He wish you to do?  As you strive during your earthly journey to love God and neighbor, what does He wish you to do?

“Do whatever He tells you.”  These words of our Blessed Mother are not just for servers at a wedding 2000 years ago.  If each of us listened to our Blessed Mother, our families would be strong.  Each human family would reflect the love seen in the Holy Family.  Each human family would be a school of discipleship, apprenticing its members in the love of God and neighbor.  The principle of all that Jesus tells us to do is the self-sacrifice seen on Calvary, where Jesus gave His life for His Bride, the Church.

As the family goes, so goes society.  The family that’s rooted in God strengthens society.  But the family itself is made of individuals.  Each individual within each family—excepting the Holy Family—is a fallen sinner.

As the first of the signs of Jesus’ glory that St. John records in his Gospel account, the miracle at Cana points to nothing less than the divinization of man:  that is, the capacity of the human person to abide in God’s love.  What is merely natural and of this earth—water—becomes something more, something richer and deeper.  What for human beings is ordinary is made a conduit of God’s extraordinary grace.  As the venerable wedding instruction preaches:  “Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome.  Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy.”

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Samuel 4:1-11  +  Mark 1:40-45
January 13, 2022

[Jesus] remained outside in deserted places ….

In today’s Gospel passage, we hear that Jesus “remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.”  Jesus’ “retreat” is not that of a hermit.  Jesus’ frequent journeys to deserted places was a prudential distancing himself from those He came into this world to serve.  Jesus wanted at times simply to be in prayerful communion with His Father.

At the same time, perhaps Jesus knew that the people He was sent to serve needed a “breather”.  It’s hard for us to imagine what it was like to hear the Word of God preach the Good News, or work stupendous miracles.  We may imagine that because we’ve seen movies portraying such events, that we have an idea what it was like for those first-century folk.  If so, we underestimate the power of the Word of God made Flesh, and overestimate the power of cinema.

Often implicitly, and sometimes directly, Jesus says that the crowds are misunderstanding Him, even praising Him for the wrong reasons.  Some distance between Him and them, then, was prudent so that the crowds might reflect in their minds and hearts on the mysteries of Christ.  Of course, in the end, the crowds called for His death:  “Crucify him!  crucify him!”  So also have we ourselves cried by our sins.  But within the desert of Calvary Christ offered His life, so that throughout all ages to come, people might keep coming to Him from everywhere.