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

Jan 30 2025

The Family Business

Working for God doesn’t always guarantee a welcome. When the prophet Amos, from the south, showed up at the sanctuary in Bethel, about fourteen miles north of Jerusalem, the priest Amaziah was not thrilled to see him. “Go home,” he shouted. “Prophesy there and leave us alone.” Amos’ response is interesting. “Not my idea to be here, nor to be doing this,” he says. “I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. The Lord told me to do this.”

Perhaps Jesus’ disciples knew the story, since many of them were from up north—the fishermen Peter and Andrew, James and John, to be sure. And more than likely most of the others. When God calls you, you go. The same happened when Jesus came along. All he said was “Follow me” and they did. Now he sends them out, preaching, teaching, healing, and casting out demons. Travel light, he says. Stay where you land. Keep to the message. If they don’t want it, move along.

The Lord continues to send us out, as God did with prophets and as Jesus did with those first disciples. The world needs the message more than ever: God wants a family that will be faithful to God, loving to each other and caring for the earth once entrusted to Adam and Eve for tending. God wants a holy people. This holiness comes as a gift from God, if we accept it. For this message to get out, messengers are needed, witnesses in word and deed. That’s us.

Consider/Discuss

Do you see yourself as “sent” to witness to your faith by word and action?
How do the instructions Jesus gives his disciples carry over into our world?

Responding to the Word

Jesus, Risen Lord, you continue to call men and women to join you in the work of preaching the gospel and delivering the world from the power of evil. Give us generous hearts that we might respond willingly to your invitation and faithfully fulfill the work to which you have called us.

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

Gracious Living

How many times have we taken to heart the opening greeting often used at Sunday Eucharist: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you”? To live graciously is to live within and out of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In today’s reading from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul commends the community for excelling in many ways but expresses the hope that they will excel in imitating the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is referring to their acting in imitation of Christ’s self-emptying. Christ who was rich in divinity became poor by pouring himself out for others. In self-offering, he gave himself both in ministry and especially on the cross, that others might be freed from the power of sickness and death.

Today we see Jesus graciously reach out to two desperate women. One had been hemorrhaging for twelve years, making her continually “unclean,” so she could not be in any contact with friends or family, or worship with others. She had lost everything, was truly impoverished. The other was a twelve-year-old girl whose frantic father had come for Jesus to heal her. To both women Jesus showed the gracious love of God, a healing touch restoring them to life.

The book of Wisdom states that God did not make death. God calls us to live graciously, generously. In Christ’s death and resurrection we glimpse the divine plan: that we die to self so as to live in God.

Consider/Discuss

What does being gracious mean?
How have you known the grace of God?
Can you see ways in which God’s grace can touch others through you?

Responding to the Word

Amazing, gracious God, look kindly on us and fill us with your grace. Expand our hearts so we might be generous to others as you have been to us. Bless our days that we might spread the light of your life to those who feel trapped by the darkness.

Jan 30 2025

A Day for Singing

Luke’s infancy narrative would make a wonderful opera. One song leads to another, beginning with Elizabeth’s joyful greeting to Mary, then Mary’s Magnificat, followed by Zechariah’s song at John’s birth, climaxing with the angels’ hymn at Christ’s birth, and gently closing with old Simeon’s canticle in the temple.

Today we focus on the event that motivated Zechariah’s great song of praise: the birth of John the Baptist. To appreciate this story we must remember the events leading up to what we hear in the Gospel. The archangel Gabriel had appeared to the priest Zechariah as he was offering incense in the temple, telling him that he and his long-barren wife, Elizabeth, would finally have their prayers answered with a son who would do great things for God. Quite taken aback, Zechariah asked how he could know this to be true. Wrong question! For doubting, he was made mute.

Just as Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Zechariah gave birth to a song, one of the most beautiful in scripture, recognizing “the Lord, the God of Israel who has visited and brought redemption to his people,” and hailing his infant child as one who would be called “the prophet of the Most High, going before the Lord to prepare his way” (see Luke 1:68–79). John, of course, would go into the desert to sing his own song: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” And, in the fullness of time, Jesus, God’s love song to the world, came, and the singing still goes on.

Consider/Discuss

What song has God given you to sing? (And don’t say, “I can’t sing!”)
What song does our parish sing to God? Our country? Our world?

Responding to the Word

God of all creation, from the beginning creation sang as you brought the world from chaos into light. Throughout the story of Israel, men and women raised their voices praising your holy name. In Jesus you sang your song of love to us. May our voices join with all the angels and saints in joyful praise.

Jan 30 2025

Seeds of Hope

I watch most of the children in my three brothers’ families growing into what is called “emerging adulthood.” It must be very difficult at times for parents, only being able to watch, hope, and pray as their children start to move away from home and begin to make their own way into the world. Will they be safe, make the right choices, be happy?

Making use of images from nature, scripture reminds us that God gives the growth, whether it is to mighty cedars springing from small shoots, ripened grain sprouting from the blade, or a fully grown mustard plant emerging from the tiniest of seeds to offer its large branches as housing for the birds.

Such poetic language calls us to reflect on the mystery of the kingdom of God, whose seeds were found in the various covenants extended to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, and then fully enfleshed in Jesus so many millennia ago. This kingdom continues to sprout in our day, often where least expected.

Sometimes it breaks through like a mighty cedar, but more often it is a quieter blossoming, suddenly emerging like stalks of grain, or the first signs of life carried in a mother’s body. I am sure God has worried for all the children of every age who have filled the earth. The kingdom of life won by Christ continues to have the power to carry all God’s sons and daughters into the loving arms of the God Jesus taught us to call Father.

Consider/Discuss

What do you see around you that speaks of the mystery of growth? What encourages or discourages growth?
What is God presently calling to grow to fullness in your own life? In the life of your parish community? In our world?

Responding to the Word

God of all life, we thank you for the many ways life continues to flourish in our world and in our land. Bless the life you have entrusted to our care. Guide us in raising it to harvest. Remove any obstacles we place in its way. We ask this in Jesus’ name.