Year A

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

Israel’s primary ethical obligation was social responsibility. Righteousness, which describes the quality of the relationship with God, is really a divine characteristic. Human beings only appropriate it when they are in right relationship with God. In response to the people’s fidelity, they are encouraged to proceed to God’s holy mountain. Even faithful foreigners will be allowed to rejoice here as members of the praying community. The temple is now designated as a house of prayer for all people, not merely a national shrine reserved for the elect. Now God is accessible to all, not merely to those of the bloodline of Israel.

Lest Gentile Christians think that their acceptance of Christ has made them superior to Jews, Paul emphasizes Israelite privilege. They were God’s special people, and it was to them that God granted extraordinary gifts. Paul argues that if he turned to the Gentiles because some Jews would not listen to him, now Jews will be jealous because Gentiles have accepted his message and will be converted. If the Jews’ rejection of the gospel brought reconciliation with God to the rest of the world, how much more will their acceptance of the gospel affect them? Gentiles have no reason to feel superior, for they too were sinners, and God granted them divine mercy.

The story of the Canaanite woman addresses several important and interrelated issues: crossing territorial and cultural boundaries, public social exchange of women and men, the Christian mission to the Gentiles, and the issue of faith. First, despite the belief that to cross into pagan territory was to leave God’s holy land, Jesus deliberately crosses into Gentile territory. In addition, the woman was unattended, a fact that threatened Jesus’ respectability. However, Jesus disregards the factors of gender, ethnic/religious background, and questionable lifestyle in order to reconcile to God a person who was marginalized by society.

Jan 15 2025

When Sinking, Call on the Lord

We all have moments of feeling “down,” times of discouragement, depression, loss, fear, anxiety, (fill in the blank). Such “moods” can descend unexpectedly or result from a particular event. They can pass quickly or stay longer. The three main characters in today’s scriptures are having such a moment.

After Elijah had his showdown with the prophets of Baal in Israel and led the Israelites in slaughtering them, word came that Jezebel wanted him killed, so he set out into the desert. There, he sat down and said to God, “Enough! Life is unbearable. Let me die.” But God wasn’t finished with Elijah, and sent an angel with some food and drink and told him to walk “forty days” to Mount Horeb (Sinai). There, God appeared.

Paul would go first into the synagogues to preach about Jesus as Israel’s long awaited Messiah. But the response was not overwhelming. Often he was run out of town, beaten, or tossed into jail. We hear his grief today. Still, he trusts God will work it out, and later proclaims, “God has not rejected his people . . . For the gifts and call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:2, 29).

Perhaps Peter is the most instructive for our “sinking” occasions. He was doing fine until he lost focus. As long as he looked to Jesus, he walked on water. When he focused on the wind and the waves, he sank. When he re-focused on Jesus and cried out for help, Jesus’ hand caught him. There seems to be a lesson here.

Consider/Discuss

What gets you “down”?
Do you cry out to the Lord and ask for help?

Responding to the Word

Today’s responsorial psalm assures us that “Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him” and “The Lord himself will give his benefits.” In those times when the waves of chaos threaten to overwhelm us, we can pray: “Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation.”

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

Elijah has retreated into a cave, but God calls him from this place of shelter and darkness to stand before the Lord out in the open. There he witnesses the wind, the earthquake, and the fire associated with God’s appearance, but he does not experience God within these natural marvels. It is only when he hears a “tiny whispering sound” that he is gripped with the realization that God is present. He covers his face in an act of reverence. Most commentators maintain that this tiny whisper points to the importance of the small and seemingly insignificant in life as the stage upon which the revelation of God is enacted.

Paul speaks about his ardent attachment to his Jewish compatriots, his kindred according to the flesh. Although he has turned from proclaiming the gospel to the Jewish people and devoted himself to the conversion of the Gentiles, he never ceases loving the people from whom he came. It is this very love that causes him such anguish, because his own people have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah whom God first promised and then sent to them. Paul lists several prerogatives that they enjoy as the chosen people of God. However, their great est boast is that the anointed one of God came from them.

In the pre-dawn dimness, the apostles saw Jesus walking toward them on the water. To portray Jesus walking on the chaotic water was to cast him in the guise of this creator-god who alone governs chaotic waters. Peter accepted Jesus’ invitation to walk on the water to him. Peter is a model of both faith and lack of faith. He believed that he would be able to walk on the water, and he did; he doubted that he would be able to long endure the chaotic waters, and he did not. Ultimately, it was faith that won out, for Peter cried out to Jesus, knowing that Jesus had the power to save him, and he did.

Jan 15 2025

“Come and Get It!”

A TV series featured an English chef going into an elementary school in Huntington, West Virginia, trying to change the children’s eating habits. The resistance he first encounters is fierce. The children choose pizza over fresh chicken, throwing the beans and salad into the trash. Even sadder was the resistance of the adults: the women who prepare lunch, the school principal, and even the food supervisor of the school system.

We see Jesus feeding people in many ways throughout the Gospels: by his words and deeds, by his preaching, teaching, and healing. In today’s account, he literally feeds a crowd of over five thousand with five loaves and two fish. This event is a sign of God’s ongoing desire to meet our hungers with generosity and life-giving nourishment.

This feeding reveals Jesus as his Father’s Son, the God who calls people to come, eat and drink without paying, without cost. God wants to feed us so we have and share life with others. We can refuse both the food of God’s word and the food of the Eucharist, even when we receive it with our ears and mouths, by not taking it into our lives.

The word “heed” comes twice in the first reading: “Heed me and you shall eat well . . . Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life.” God cries for us to hear, to listen “that you may have life,” to receive the love of God revealed in Jesus, and let it nourish us into eternal life.

Consider/Discuss

Do you take and digest the food that God feeds you at the table of the word and the table of the Eucharist?
Are you willing to distribute the food of God’s word and God’s love to others, as the disciples were asked to do?

Responding to the Word

We pray that we fully take in the food Jesus gives to us. We ask that the bread of the word and the bread of the Eucharist be nourishment that strengthens us in this life and enables us to walk in the way of the Lord. We pray that we may give this food to others.

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

God is cast in the role of a street vendor, who offers food and drink at no cost both to those who are able to pay and to those who are not. All are invited to come to the Lord in order to be nourished. What God has to offer is satisfying and will be long-lasting, compared with all else for which people seem to spend their money. The real object of the invitation is God’s announcement of the reestablishment of a covenant bond. This prophecy suggests that the covenant had been violated, and now God is eager to restore the severed bond. Paul insists that nothing that can separate believers from the love of Christ. He is probably challenging the long-standing notion that a person’s misfortune is the consequence of some misdeed. Paul turns this understanding upside down by insisting that the opposite can be true—that the righteous, precisely because they are righteous, enter into the sufferings of Christ. In other words, misfortune does not separate them from Christ; it can actually unite them with him. Paul makes four significant points: 1) God’s love for us is basic to everything, 2) this love comes to us through Jesus, 3) Jesus is God’s “anointed one,” and 4) Jesus is the Lord to whom we give our allegiance.

The death of John the Baptist prompted Jesus to seek a place where he might be by himself. However, his departure did not deter the crowds, who seemed to know where he was going and arrived there before he did. Jesus’ actions over the food were brief but significant. He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it as food. The eucharistic overtones are obvious. The role played here by the apostles cannot be overlooked. They were the ones through whom the crowds experienced the munificence of Jesus. The author of the Gospel shows by this that Jesus provides for his people through the agency of the church.