Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jan 30 2025

Open Your Ears, Your Eyes!

What is it that blocks the ears of the heart from hearing? The eyes of the heart from seeing? It even happens with people who are closest to us: family, friends, neighbors, people we work with. We just don’t hear what they are trying to tell us, or our ability to see falters. We tend to see people only as they once were and not as who they have become. We stop looking beyond the surface, saying, “Oh, I see” when we really don’t.

This seems to have happened with Jesus when he returned to his hometown after preaching and teaching all through the Galilee region up north. He had been working wonders: casting out demons, curing the sick, healing lepers, even raising the dead daughter of a local synagogue official. And yet when he returns home to Nazareth, goes to the synagogue and teaches there, people respond only with astonishment, not faith. We hear two of the saddest lines in the Gospel: “he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.”

The same thing happened to prophets in the past. Men like Ezekiel were even warned by God that the Israelites were “hard of face and obstinate of heart.” And Paul certainly had his problems, even with communities he had founded. Today’s readings remind us of two sobering realities: God continues to talk to us and we continue to exercise our freedom not to listen.

Consider/Discuss

Can you recognize in yourself any tendency to be “hard of face and obstinate of heart”?
How do you take steps to “listen” for what God might be saying, to “see” how God might be trying to get your attention?

Responding to the Word

God, giver of all good gifts, help us to see you in the world around us, to hear your voice in the many ways you try to speak to us. Give us that gift of faith so that you can continue to work your wonders in our midst and bring life to your creation.

Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

Ezekiel has an official mission, with all of the authority that this entails. He is to be the representative of God, sent by God to deliver a message from God. The Israelites, to whom he is being sent, are a rebellious people, “hard of face and obstinate of heart.” They have always been rebellious, from the time of their ancestors to the prophet’s own day, and so there is little reason to think that they will acquiesce to a message from God now. Still, whether they resist the prophet or heed him, they will know that he is a prophet of God, because dire consequences of their rebelliousness will fall on them.

Paul knows that it is foolish to allow himself to be overly elated or lifted up because of any spiritual favors that he has received. Such self-aggrandizement could easily develop into a personality cult. If he became the center of attention, it might be detrimental to the gospel that he had been sent to preach. Lest this happen, he is stricken with a thorn in the flesh. The nature of this affliction is not clear. Whatever its nature, it humbled him just at the time he might have been exalted. Praying to be relieved of it, he is told: “Power is made perfect in weakness.”

The people of Nazareth were not ignorant of Jesus’ teaching and the marvelous works that he had accomplished. However, they challenged the source of these wonders. Who did Jesus think he was? The point of the story is the rejection by those who knew Jesus the best, but apparently understood him the least. It was a situation not uncommon for those who have been drawn out of the group by God to speak God’s word to that group. The people here lacked the faith required for the power of God to be effective in their midst. Though astonished by Jesus, they were scandalized by him, and he was amazed at this.

Jan 27 2025

This Is the Day—to Take a Chance

Jesus seemed to be a failure. He came to his hometown. They had heard about his miracles. They wanted him to be a local sensation. But he only did a couple of healings. To their faithless eyes, he looked like he might be a failure.

St. Paul likewise seemed to be a failure. He wrote that he had a thorn in his flesh and prayed three times for it to go away. Yet God did not take it away. Did Paul not have enough faith? At first glance, that might seem to have been the case.

Today, Christianity may look like a failure. There are fewer avowed Christians in Europe and a growing number for whom it doesn’t matter in the U.S. Jesus is a prophet without honor in our society.

You and I, we might be in a time of failure, too. A relationship may have crashed. A job may have bombed. An institution that we trusted has revealed its brokenness.

What are we to do with failure? It can bring us low. Failure hurts. Let us not be afraid to wrestle with God about that. The core of our faith is the cross. Hanging on that wood, Jesus was an utter failure. The cross hurt.

Then God did something completely new and raised Jesus from the dead. Who expected that?

Through the Resurrection, God transforms failure into hope— hope that our shortcomings will be redeemed, hope that what is dead will live again; hope that God will re-create all things afresh.

For God defines success differently. Like a perpetual inventor, God risks new things. Every time a baby is conceived, God tries again. Ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever lived on this earth are now extinct. The Creator tries again.

When we are low, the Holy Spirit tugs at our hearts to strengthen our hope. We too can try again. What did Paul hear in prayer? “My grace is sufficient for you.” History is long. God is continually at work.

Consider/Discuss

Jesus was not afraid to be innovative. He lived in a risky way. The living God was willing to die on the cross. Sometimes we are afraid to try something to which God calls us because it is risky, because we might fail. How many God-inspired opportunities do we miss because of our fear? How could we flex our risk-muscles today?
What troubles come when we are too successful? Throughout history, when Christianity looked like it was “winning,” power tainted the practice of faith. What if Jesus had allowed the people to make him their king? Imagine how the history of the world would have been different if Jesus had “succeeded” instead of “failed.” Where would we be today?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord God of all creation, it feels as though we are in a season of failure in the Church in the Western world. We have moved away from a time of success, when there were many cultural supports for Christianity. Thank you for this “failure.” Thank you for shaking us out of business as usual. Jesus our Savior, you are still very real. You are still here. You know the broad sweep of history. You yourself have seen what can arise from failure. Holy Spirit, come! Come to us! Grant us new ardor and new ways to proclaim the time-tested gospel. Purify us to live wholly for you, today, this day, for this is your day, when you make all things new.

Jan 27 2025

Scripture Study for

The reading from Ezekiel occurs in a vision of the divine glory, in which he is told to speak to Israel, now undergoing hardship at the hand of Babylon. The prophet is sent to the people to proclaim to them what God is doing and why. Yet God knows that the people will not listen to Ezekiel, because they, like their ancestors, are rebellious. Nevertheless, the prophet is sent to speak God’s word, which must be proclaimed regardless of the people’s willingness to hear it. The proclamation of God’s word is not dependent on whether it will be heard or not; it is God’s word to the people, and therefore must be spoken.

Toward the end of his letter to the Corinthians, Paul “boasts of the things that show my weakness” (11:30). Although he has himself had “an abundance of revelations,” he also knows himself to be profoundly weak, as evidenced by whatever it is he calls the “thorn in the flesh.” Christ allows this thorn to remain, despite the fact that it is “an angel of Satan,” to prevent Paul from falling into the trap of relying on himself rather than on Christ. It is a great paradox that acknowledging weakness, and the hardships and struggles this entails, allows believers to let the power of Christ work in them, making them strong (because they realize that it is not in fact their strength, but Christ’s).

In last week’s Gospel, when Jesus brought to life the daughter of Jairus, the people had ridiculed him, an expression of their lack of faith. Here again Jesus encounters a want of faith in his hometown. Although they acknowledge the wisdom of his teaching and the reality of his “mighty deeds,” the people can only see Jesus as just a local boy. The “offense” they take at him may indicate a sense that he is trying to “rise above his station.” Their disbelief, grounded in their own idea of what is proper or possible, is self-fulfilling, in that it prevents Jesus from bringing to bear in their lives the full power of God.

Jan 15 2025

Home Schooling

When you think of a king coming before his people, the image of someone riding on a donkey does not come to mind. If the Lone Ranger had Silver and Roy Rogers had Trigger, a similar white stallion would seem most fitting for a king. Not an ass, even a purebred one. But this image from the prophet Zechariah is one that must have planted itself in the imagination of Jesus, for that is how he made his great entrance into Jerusalem and was greeted as the Messiah. It was not the entrance of a powerful warrior, but of a gentle king whose rule would bring peace to the nations.

I have sometimes regretted the loss of St. Christopher from the calendar of saints. That legendary saint, whose name means “Christ-bearer,” signaled that the risen Lord had now chosen to be carried by his disciples. We bear him in our bodies, minds, and hearts. We bring him to the world when we work to bring peace and healing and knowledge of the Father.

This necessitates being willing to take on the yoke of Jesus. I remember once hearing that the yokes Jesus made in the carpenter shop under Joseph’s guidance rode easily on the shoulders of the animals, distributing evenly the weight they pulled. The yoke Jesus offers us is his teaching about the kingdom of heaven and how to live in it while in the world. This means putting on his attitude and spirit of attentive listening for the will of the Father—home schooling in the best sense.

Consider/Discuss

How do you believe Jesus will return at the end of time?
Have you accepted the yoke of the Lord? How does it guide you?

Responding to the Word

Lord, give us the rest only you can give when we feel burdened by life’s labors and sorrows. Open our hearts so that we learn from you to seek and accept the yoke that is easy. Give us the strength to help others with the burdens that weigh them down.