Rev. James A. Wallace, C.Ss.R.

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

“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

In Search Of: A Wise Heart

If God were to offer you your heart’s desire, what would you ask for? Solomon did not request health or wealth. Nor did he ask God to remove his enemies— either those inherited from his father or those acquired when he was given the crown at a very young age. Solomon asked for wisdom, for a heart that understands or listens. Such wisdom included the ability to judge justly and to distinguish right from wrong. God was pleased.

The gift of wisdom allows the heart to see; the letter to the Ephesians refers to “seeing with the eyes of the heart.” And wisdom brings the ability to hear the word of the Lord even when spoken in the sound of silence, as Elijah did. Such seeing and hearing lie at the heart of the first two parables. Seeing God’s reign is likened to finding a treasure in a field or seeking a most valuable pearl—when one sees where it is hidden or hears where it can be found, one gives all one has to make it one’s own.

The heart can spend many years and look in many places for happiness. We can bypass the kingdom again and again, going off into various dead ends, cul de sacs, and blind alleys. Paul reminds the Romans that all things work for good for those who look to God. God, who has predestined us to share the image of the Son, wishes to give us the wisdom needed to discover where the kingdom is hidden.

Consider/Discuss

What is your heart’s desire?
Have you asked for that wisdom that is a gift of the Holy Spirit?
Of the different parables you have heard these last three weeks, which one speaks most to your heart?

Responding to the Word

Remembering that “the revelation of [God’s] words sheds light” (Psalm 119), ask God to give you the wisdom needed in your life to seek out the divine presence and to respond wholeheartedly to that presence, so that God rules in your heart, mind, and spirit as you grow into the image of Jesus Christ.

Jan 15 2025

The Patience and Power of God

Our experience of the world is often an experience of opposites: truth and lies, goodness and evil, beauty and ugliness. They are found in intimate proximity, often on the same page of the newspaper or in the same half-hour news report, and intertwined in the same human heart. Their existence is connected to human freedom as well as to the power of sin and evil in our world.

Jesus tells a parable that makes the same point as the author of Wisdom: God’s exercise of power is tempered by leniency and mercy; God’s justice is balanced by loving-kindness. Our desire to pull up and destroy the weeds prematurely could destroy the good wheat. While the interpretation in the Gospel applies this image to different groups in a community, we can also hear this parable as referring to the weeds and wheat, the evil and goodness residing in the heart.

Jesus says God’s active presence in the world is something as small as a mus tard seed and as fragile as a pinch of yeast, yet each contains a power that, when released, will bring about growth and expansion.

In the meantime, the challenge is being as patient with others as God is, while working with God to purify our own hearts. Last week Jesus warned about the sluggish heart; today he pictures a contaminated heart, good interpenetrated by evil. But the power of God is stronger than the power of evil and death. Be patient, and remain open to the workings of God’s grace.

Consider/Discuss

What do you see as “weeds” in your life, in the community, in the world?
Where have you seen the power of God at work in small and hidden ways?
How can the patience and kindness of God work through you?

Responding to the Word

We respond by praying: “O God, you have given us the gift of life; continue to keep us alive in Christ Jesus. Bring us from death to grow in faith, hope, and love. We remain patient in prayer and faithful to your word, until your glory is revealed.”

Jan 15 2025

Rejuvenating Sluggish Hearts

Isaiah provides us with a glimpse of what ecologists today would refer to as the integrity of creation. Focusing on precipitation in the forms of rain and snow, he traces the cycle that it takes. His understanding comes from observation of nature, the primary source of wisdom. This metaphor assures us that we can be as confident of the power of the word of God as we can be of the working of the natural world. Just as nature produces miracles upon which we can rely and because of which we can survive, so the word of God can effect miracles upon which we can rely and because of which we can live.

Paul’s teaching on the end of time takes a very interesting turn. He maintains that the new life of which he speaks is not limited to the human sphere. Rather, the entire created world participates in this transformation. The entire created world is somehow swept up with humankind into this eschatological drama, awaiting the revelation that will be granted the children of God, not as spectators, but as participants. Paul assures the Christians that they already possess the first fruits of the Spirit, a pledge that guarantees they will be brought into full transformation. By implication, all of creation will be brought along with them.

The Gospel parable focuses neither on the sower nor on the seed, but on the receptivity of the soil. The parable is not a difficult story to understand. But what does it really mean? Jesus provides his disciples an allegorical interpretation of the parable. In each case described, the sown word is actually heard; to some extent it is accepted. Jesus is not referring to outright rejection from outsiders, but to the way followers receive the word of God. When one understands the meaning of the parable, one is apt to wonder: What kind of soil am I? How receptive am I to the word of God?