Ordinary Time

Jan 08 2025

Ordinary Time, Holy Life

Blah! We have moved into Ordinary Time. Christmas is over. The January doldrums have set in. We are surrounded by the same plain old life and the same plain old people.

The Super Bowl might break the post-Christmas blahs for football fans. Snow banks can become snow forts for those who like to dig. Otherwise, blah. Where’s the adventure? Where’s the excitement? Those big moments like Christmas and weddings and vacations mark our lives; it’s the six-tiered cake pictures that go into our memory books!

The baptism of Jesus was a big moment. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist is still talking about it. He is remembering: “I have seen!” He is telling others about how the dove descended and how the Lord spoke: “and I have testified!” He is about to send his followers into action.

Ordinary Time is the time for remembering. Then we put memory into action. Isaiah remembers how God formed him in the womb and called him to a life of prophetic service; therefore, he calls the Israelites back, to be a holy nation. The psalmist remembers how God drew him out of a pit of destruction and put a new song in his mouth. Therefore, he wants to follow: “To do your will is my delight.”

So how do we work our way through Ordinary Time? We remember. Then we act. Every day is a remembering, followed by the noble adventure of following Jesus. Thus it is the everyday moments that make our lives. We may not have a picture of mom’s oatmeal in our memory books, but it nourished us daily. We may not have a picture of the hug that quieted our tears, but it shaped our soul. Day-to-day personal holiness—the faithfulness, kindness, and honesty of everyday life—that is what history is made of.

Consider/Discuss

We don’t have to achieve holiness all by ourselves; the Holy Spirit is called the Sanctifier for a reason. If we grow attuned to listening to the Spirit, we will be brought to holiness. What do you remember of what God has done for you? How does that spur you to act?
Step by step, we are to be transformed into the person of Christ—to be a gift of love to this world. Tell a story of what everyday holiness has looked like in your life.

Living and Praying with the Word

God Almighty, you are grand and glorious! We see your grandeur when we look at the vastness of the stars and the radiance of the sun. Yet our lives are lived in littleness. Getting out of bed each day, taking one step after another, we mark the days of our lives. Send us your grace in abundance so that we will do each little task for love of you. Let your Spirit rest on us as well and make holy our actions, even when they lead through the desert.

Jan 08 2025

Scripture Study for

In Exodus 19:6, God announces that Israel is being formed to be “a holy nation,” a people that shows to the rest of the earth the holiness of God by its way of life. Just so, the servant in the first reading is intended to take up Israel’s role and show forth God’s glory. The servant is first charged with a mission to bring back Israel (“Jacob”) to God, that is, to gather Israel back into faithful relationship with God. The servant will then take up the role of Israel and act as a light to the nations, drawing them to God so that they, like Israel, may receive salvation.

Paul’s greeting to the Corinthians signals a theme of the letter, namely the Corinthians’ holiness. He first alludes to his authority as an apostle of Christ. He will rely on this authority to address problems in the church at Corinth, all of which relate in some way to a failure on the Corinthians’ part to appreciate the implications of their life in Christ, which is to be sanctified and sanctifying. Those who call on the name of Christ are of the church of God—and Paul will remind them of what this means for their conduct, especially with each other.

John the Baptist identifies Jesus as both “Lamb of God” and “Son of God.” The former points toward Jesus’ death on the cross, which the Evangelist will associate with the sacrifice of the Passover lamb (Jesus dies on the “preparation day” when the lambs are slaughtered and his legs are not broken, just as the bones of the Passover lamb are not to be broken [John 19:33, 36; Exodus 12:46]). This image is combined with that of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:5–7, who, “like a lamb led to slaughter” will take on the sins of the people. The death of Jesus as the Lamb of God will be effective because Jesus is the Son of God, on whom now, as at his baptism, the Spirit rests.

Jan 06 2025

Scripture Study for

The day of the Lord is the time of the fulfillment. It is the time when justice will be realized, the scales of righteousness will be balanced, the good will be rewarded, and the evil will be punished. Israel believed that that day would be a time of vindication and rejoicing. On that day, the Lord will rise majestically for the upright, like the sun in the eastern sky that shines forth in righteousness. The healing flowing from this experience of God is the total reversal of the flaming destruction in store for the wicked.

Paul instructs the community to seek internal harmony and to strive for a positive reputation before those outside the community. Paul offers his own conduct as an example for them to follow. He reminds them that his own behavior has been beyond reproach. He has not presumed upon the hospitality of others; he is not a financial burden to them. This leads him to comment on a situation that he has been told exists within the community. Some have been acting like busybodies rather than actually being busy. Paul insists that if people want to eat, they must work like everyone else.

The Gospel reading addresses the signs that should alert the people to impending doom. These signs are demonstrations of upheaval. They include political unrest and violence as well as disturbances in the natural world, all experiences that people believed would precede the end of the age. They also portend the persecutions that the followers of Jesus will have to endure at the hands of governments, friends and acquaintances, and even family members. The persecutions they will be called upon to endure will be a witness to the name of Jesus. Though Jesus might be talking about the events that would precede the actual destruction of the glorious temple and the beloved city within which it stood, elements in his discourse suggest an end-of-time dimension to his teaching.

Jan 06 2025

Prepare for the Day of the Lord

People say that 9/11 changed us irrevocably, that we have lost for good a sense of being invulnerable. That dreadful day revealed we were no longer secure from the kind of violence that could suddenly turn our world upside down, shattering our well-being, bringing death and destruction, and leaving us in a world of fear, insecurity, and anxiety. Unfortunately, such experiences characterize so much of human history.

The destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., an event that Jesus could see coming, was an “end of the world” experience for the people of Jerusalem. The temple was for them the heart of the city, the most sacred space for Israel, God’s dwelling place among the Chosen People. Luke’s own community also knew of the persecution and hardship Jesus speaks of today. What was important then and remains important now is a willingness to give witness to the Lord in all circumstances, even when doing so threatens our world. We too can take comfort in Jesus’ words: “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.”

Consider Jesus’ final words today: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” We can take comfort knowing that if we persevere, when the Day of the Lord comes, we will counted among the just who will experience it as the arrival of “the sun of justice with its healing rays.” In the meantime, as Paul advises, go about your lives, working quietly to bring about the kingdom of God.

Consider/Discuss

Don’t we already know the “Day of the Lord” every Sunday when Christ comes to us in the Eucharist?
How are you called to witness to the Lord in your life?

Responding to the Word

God who comes, we ask that you give us the grace to persevere through whatever trials and upheavals come into our lives. Help us to live in the awareness that your Son is with us and continues to draw us more deeply into communion with you through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Jan 06 2025

Taking the Long View

To get the full impact of the first reading, I strongly suggest you go to your Bible and read Second Maccabees, Chapter 7. You wonder what the mother of the Maccabees would have said to the Sadducees trying to trap Jesus over belief in the resurrection of the body. How would this woman, who watched the thugs of a sadistic king cruelly torture with whips and scourges her seven sons over their refusal to eat pork, ever have been able to encourage her sons to remain faithful to God’s law without a belief in the resurrection? This belief was her rock. It justified her taking the long view, that their death, in fidelity to God, gives way to a bodily resurrection.

For the Sadducees, however, faith was based on the Torah (the Pentateuch). Only what was written in the Torah had to be believed. Since there is no mention of resurrection, they rejected it. And they use a story of a woman marrying seven brothers to trap Jesus. Jesus says two things in response. First, what happens in the next life is going to be different, not the same old, same old. Second, when God spoke the divine Name to Moses, God did not say, “I was the God of your dead ancestors.” Rather, God said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Implication: God is a God of the living—in God all are alive.

Couple that with Jesus’ own resurrection and you have good reason for this hope we carry in our hearts.

Consider/Discuss

What does belief in the resurrection of the body tell you about God?
What does it tell you about your own body? Does it have any implications for how you treat your body?

Responding to the Word

God of the living, we thank you for the promise you have given us in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. We thank you for the faith that tells us that those who die in him will rise in him. May this promise, rooted in our baptism, continue to give us hope in our difficulties.