Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
Mark 4:21-25

“The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you ….”

Jesus proclaims two truths for reflection today.  Both might at first hearing seem to discourage the virtue of humility.  But each prepares us for greater service to our Lord.

When Jesus in today’s Gospel passage notes that a lamp is meant to be “placed on a lampstand”, He does not specifically refer to His disciples here as “the light of the world”, as He does in Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.  Nonetheless, Mark’s text makes the inference clear.  Disciples are not meant to hide themselves, their belief, or Christ from others in the world.  On the contrary, they are called to share the Good News!  This clearly stands in conflict with a culture dominated by moral and religious relativism.

When Jesus in today’s Gospel passage notes that to “the one who has, more will be given” and “from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away”, some might accuse Jesus of sounding like Wall Street tycoons.  Jesus just doesn’t sound fair.  But what God gives, He gives for others:  if He gives me a grace or charism, it is for others.  Only in being faithful to serving others with what I have may I hope someday to reach Heaven.  So in someone being given more, he is commanded to greater service of God and His people.

Sts. Timothy & Titus, Bishops
2 Timothy 1:1-8 [or Titus 1:1-5]  + Mark 4:1-20
January 26, 2022

“The mystery of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you.”

Given that Saint Mark’s Gospel account—the shortest of the four—focuses more on Jesus’ actions than His preaching, we ought to take special note of the preaching that Mark does include in his Gospel account.  We might, then, consider the parables Mark includes as his “best of…” list.

Today’s Gospel passage has three parts.  The first and the last are Jesus’ proclamation of a parable, and the parable’s explanation.  In between, Jesus briefly explains His general purpose in preaching through parables.  Most of the fourth chapter of Mark consists of parables, and today’s Gospel passage consists of the first twenty verses of Mark 4, so today’s parable is of primary importance.

The Parable of the Sower, Mark’s telling of which is a mere six verses, has inspired dissertations hundreds of pages long.  Like the mustard seed (to allude to a different parable), this parable’s size belies its potency.  To choose one simple facet of today’s parable:  who is the sower?  There are at least two answers.  We can consider the sower to be either God the Father, or you as an individual.  Consider the former possibility.

The sower is God the Father.  He sows His Word (God the Son) prodigally.  What seems like foolishness or imprudence in His manner of sowing is in fact a measure of His love’s depth.  He offers His Word even to those of us whose souls are rocky or otherwise inhospitable.  The challenge here is for each individual to till the soil of the soul, or otherwise tend it as needed to allow the word to take root there.

The Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle
Acts 22:3-16 [or Acts 9:1-22]  +  Mark 16:15-18
January 25, 2022

“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

The Conversion of St. Paul might seem difficult for us to relate to, especially if we are cradle Catholics.  St. Paul’s conversion was from a strict Pharisaical form of Judaism to a living faith in Jesus Christ.  But we could expand on this by saying that Paul’s conversion was from one understanding of sacrifice to another.  Saul was not a Levite:  a member of Israel’s priestly line.  But his concept of sacrifice as a faithful Jew would have been based on temple sacrifices.

Christian sacrifice, however, is not of exterior things, but of what is most interior and personal.  It’s a sacrifice not of animals, but of one’s very self, and of one’s whole self:  body, soul and spirit.  We might say that when you convert to Christ, your life is over.  You live no more, but Christ lives in you [see Galatians 2:20].  This is exemplified impressively in the Order of Saint Benedict, which at religious professions has those new members lay prostrate in the sanctuary of the abbey church.  Then they are covered by a large funeral pall.

What all three readings today (including the Responsorial Psalm) profess is the link between conversion and mission.  “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.”  One of the worst afflictions within the Church today is a privatization of the Faith:  that is, believing that one’s faith should only be a personal matter, something best kept to oneself, and which is merely for the sake of getting oneself to Heaven.  There are countless forms in which a baptized Christian might evangelize others, but every baptized Christian is called to evangelize those without faith.

St. Francis de Sales, Bishop & Doctor of the Church
II Samuel 5:1-7,10  +  Mark 3:22-30
January 24, 2022

“And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”

Jesus’ parables most often describe the Kingdom of God.  But today He preaches about the Kingdom by what in theology is called a “via negativa”:  that is, describing someone or something by what he, she or it is not, rather than what he, she or it is.  Jesus today describes what the Kingdom of God is not in rebutting the claims of the scribes.

The chief point of the parables we hear Jesus preach today is that Satan can have no place in the Kingdom of God.  He begins by debunking the scribes’ claim with simple logic.  But Jesus moves by the end of today’s passage to a “via positiva”, in which He points out why Satan can have no place within the Kingdom:  because the Kingdom is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the new creation in which the Holy Spirit hovers over the face of the Kingdom [see Genesis 1:2].

Still, in our own day we have to put Jesus’ parables in context.  We cannot help but realize that the Kingdom of God which Jesus so often preaches about is not strictly identical with the Church that Jesus founded when He walked this earth.  Would that it were so!  How clearly we can see the sins of members of the Church.  Through these sins, the absence of the Holy Spirit makes itself known.  Our sins can be forgiven, and our charity can point to the Kingdom of God, but both are possible only through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children
II Samuel 1:1-4,11-12,19,23-27  +  Mark 3:20-21
January 22, 2022

PLEASE NOTE:  In the United States, there are many other Scripture options for this day.  Please consult the local ordo.

“He is out of His mind.”

Today’s Gospel passage is only two verses long.  But what it lacks in length, it makes up for with punch!  Jesus’ relatives “set out to seize Him, for they said, ‘He is out of His mind.’”

What were these relatives thinking, and who exactly were they?  We cannot imagine the Blessed Virgin Mary doing and saying such things.  But Jesus of course was from a large extended family, a fact made clear by the Gospel narrative of the finding of the boy Jesus in the Temple.  Being related by blood to Jesus clearly was no guarantee of understanding His identity.

Then again, most of those whom Jesus chose to be His Apostles abandoned Jesus in disbelief during Holy Week, after having followed Jesus for three years, witnessing His miracles and hearing His preaching of the Gospel.  So perhaps we need to cut His relatives some slack.  We might, then, realize that while you and I may not exactly be in “good” company when we ignore Jesus’ Lordship over our lives, we at least can point to a biblical precedent, and give thanks for Jesus’ patience with the failures of even those closest to Him.

St. Agnes, Virgin Martyr
I Samuel 24:3-21  +  Mark 3:13-19
January 21, 2022

Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom He wanted ….

The Gospel account of Saint Mark the Evangelist is by far the shortest of the four Gospel accounts.  The brevity of Mark’s account is complemented by its fervor.  Jesus in this account appears as a man of action.  Consider today’s Gospel passage in this context.

From the third of Mark’s 16 chapters, we hear today of Jesus calling His Twelve.  They are meant to be men of action.  Jesus names them “Apostles, that they might be with Him and He might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.”

There are two points one might note in this sentence.  Given that the word “apostle” literally means “one who is sent”, the evangelist describes the type of mission these twelve will have.  But more primary than this being sent forth is the One who sends them.  Their “apostleship” is rooted not only in the person of Christ, but in their being “with Him”.  In our own manner, each of us as a baptized member of the Church is called to serve, but is called first to be “with Him” each day.

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.