Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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.

Jan 12 2025

Waiting in Joyful Hope

It’s a look in the eyes—simple, trusting, innocent, almost pleading. The psalmist must have known it: “The eyes of all look hopefully to you.” Do you know that look?

I recall one day when I was trimming the fat off of a ham. I opened the door to the garage with a plateful of scraps. Our dog, Heikki, sat waiting. His big brown eyes looked hopefully at me. His tail wagged. Something tasty was coming!

Another day, the smell of brownies fills the kitchen. The timer rings. Ten-year-old Samadhi dashes around the corner and her big brown eyes look hopefully at me: are they done yet? Something delicious is coming!

What about the ten thousand hungry eyes in that deserted place in the Gospel? Might they have had that same pleading, hopeful look as Jesus looked up to heaven, said the blessing and broke the loaves of bread? Something good was coming!

I remember my mom standing in the front hall at the storm door watching for family to arrive for Christmas. Her blue eyes brimmed with expectation. She waited in joyful hope. Someone beloved was arriving!

Have you seen that look? Do you have that look?

Like the people in that deserted place, we get hungry. We get thirsty. The sun is hot and the wait is long and we are not satisfied. When troubles come, sometimes we turn our eyes inward, clench our fists, and get stuck in anxiety and worry that swirls round and round inside.

In our thirst, we could instead look up, wag our tails, and dash around the corner with a look in our eyes that something more is coming. We wait in joyful hope. Someone beloved is coming!

“You open wide your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” We are fed, deliciously.

Consider/Discuss

At our Sunday liturgy, we open wide our hands to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. What “look” do we have in our eyes at that time?
We live in a culture inundated with self-absorbed anxiety. How do “being thirsty or hungry” for God and “being anxious” differ? What does our response to trouble reveal about where (and from whom) we expect to find answers?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, you are near to all who call upon you. You ask us to pay attention, to be aware, to come to you, source of living water. Open our clenched fists, for why should we hang on to the anxiety and worry that do not bring us life? Help us to lift our eyes to you and wait in joyful hope. You give us more than we could ever ask for: overflowing baskets full of abundance.

Jan 12 2025

Scripture Study for

Chapters 40–55 of Isaiah, which emerged out of the late exilic period, insist that God is bringing an end to the period of judgment and will restore Israel beyond its former glory. This judgment came about because of Israel’s persistent refusal to believe that God alone, and not other gods, could provide all that Israel needed. In other words, they offered to other gods worship and sacrifice and received nothing in return. Now they are being offered a chance at real bread, at true satisfaction. All that is required is trust and fidelity that God, and God alone, is the source of life for Israel.

Paul has assured the Romans that they are the recipients of God’s gracious plan to bring them into conformity with the image of Christ, fulfilling their destiny to be God’s adopted children and heirs with Christ to glory. Knowing this, and that “all things work for good for those who love God,” they have nothing to fear. They have been baptized in Christ because of God’s own plan, and God will not allow that plan to go awry. They are secure in Christ and thus in Christ’s love. Absolutely nothing on earth, not angelic or other powers, not death itself can separate Christians from God. (Height and depth, as creatures, may refer to hostile forces associated with zodiacal signs.)

When Jesus hears that Herod’s impulsiveness and pride have led to the death of John the Baptist, his response is to withdraw in solitude. Yet when the crowds pursue him his pity for them recalls him to ministry. This is, after all, what he has come to do. The miracle of the fish and loaves reflects the abundance of God’s care and provision for the people, seen in Israel’s history and often imagined as a banquet in the eschaton (end of time). God’s abundant generosity is seen in the fact that they have more left over than they began with. Scholars note that the word for “fragments” here is the same as the word used in early Christian sources for the broken bread in eucharistic celebrations.

Jan 06 2025

Lasting Riches

What are your three major worries? What gets you tossing and turning at night? Money? Family? The future? Work? Then the book of Ecclesiastes is for you. There is some comfort in its world-weary wisdom. All is passing—life, love, property, worries. What good does it do to worry yourself to death? Death will come soon enough when God turns us all back to dust (that’s a little of the psalmist thrown in, for further emphasis). Now, into the week!

Thank God for Jesus. He certainly is a wise teacher in today’s Gospel, sidestepping a request to get involved in family bickering over an inheritance. His work was about getting people into the kingdom, not getting people to share the family gold. Even so, Jesus draws a lesson from this situation for the crowd: Avoid greed. Don’t reduce your life to what you accumulate.

To bring it home, he tells about a rich man so sure he is going to be around tomorrow that he plans on stockpiling all his goods for himself so he can “rest, eat, drink, and be merry” for the rest of his days. But God has other plans for him.

Jesus’ wisdom: Be rich in what matters to God. Colossians agrees: Think of what is above, of Christ at God’s right hand, of the glory that awaits you. Make Christ your all and God your treasure. Remember that the goal is transformation, not accumulation. So, put on that new self; put on Christ.

Consider/Discuss

What have you changed by worrying?
Do you accept Jesus as your teacher? What is he trying to teach you today?

Responding to the Word

Jesus, teach me to place my life and the lives of those I love in your hands. Help me to be rich in what matters to God, and to put on the new person who is the fulfillment of the Father’s plan for me. Give us all wisdom of heart.

Jan 06 2025

Scripture Study for

The word “vanity” means breath or vapor. It denotes a transitory nature or the lack of substance. “Vanity of vanities” is a way of expressing the superlative. Qoheleth is saying that everything is transitory. He is not passing judgment on living itself, but on the anticipation of future satisfaction. Our own transitory nature places the future in jeopardy, and so it is vain to place our hope of satisfaction there. This does not mean that we should refrain from commitment and hard work. It does suggest that the real fruits of our actions are found in the actions themselves rather than in what we might be able to enjoy of them in the future.

The Colossians are told to set their minds on the things of heaven because they are now joined to the risen Christ. Christ’s life is the new source for their own lives, and they will share in his ultimate manifestation in glory. Their transformation is characterized as putting off the old self and putting on the new, as one would change clothing. Finally, Paul insists that in this new way of living distinctions such as race, religious origin, gender, culture, or social status no longer feed bias or discrimination. Such distinctions need not be separations. Christ is the exclusive and determining force in all.

Jesus is approached by a man who wants him to act as arbiter between himself and his brother. Jesus uses this encounter as an occasion to teach a lesson about the futility of a life spent in amassing material possessions. The rich man is not censured because of his wealth, but because of the greed that underlies his actions. The man’s death is not a punishment for his greed. It is simply the end of his life of excess. It points out the futility of that life. Jesus draws out the moral of his story. It is foolish to devote one’s life to the amassing of goods and to be bereft in what matters to God.