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SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD

In his Apostolic Letter of 30 September 2019,  Pope Francis established that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be the Sunday of the Word of God. It is a day to be devoted to the celebration, study, and spreading of the Word of God.

 Each and every Sunday we listen to the word of God in the Scripture Readings at Mass and we hear the Gospel reading  explained to us by the priest or deacon. Throughout the whole year we see the message of salvation placed before us in the readings from the sacred scripture texts as they tell us about the message of salvation from the Angel at the annunciation to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. From the temptation of Jesus in the dessert for 40 days during Lent to the Last Supper in the upper room and then to the Cross of good Friday and the resurrection from the tomb on Easter Sunday to Pentecost when the Church began with the Holy Spirit coming down on the Apostles.

All of these events are marked in and through the readings from scripture that we listen to week after week as they tell the story of salvation. We are called to listen  as the reader, proclaims God’s Word. For in fact it is God who speaks to us when the Scriptures are read or studied. In our Gospel story this Sunday we hear about Jesus calling Andrew, Simon, Peter, James son of Zebedee and his brother John to follow him. As Jesus travelled around Galilee, he actively built a following. Biblical scholars speculate that the Galileans would network and form groups around social, economic, or religious issues. There was strength in numbers. This gospel is about the call of Jesus to the first apostles to be his followers. This gospel story is not just an echo from the past it is very much for us today as it was yesterday as all the stories in the Scriptures are call to us to action. The Word of God, that we listen to each and every Sunday which is living and active,  challenges us and calls us individually and all of us together to a response that moves beyond the liturgy itself and moves out into our daily lives.

And the word of God should lead us to engage fully in the task of making Christ known to the world by all that we do and say. So on this day when we celebrate the word of God in a special way let us listen more attentively to the  message of the Scripture Readings and put it into our daily lives.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

This weekend we have the second Sunday in ordinary time. Christmas and new year are now a distant memory as we continue our spiritual journey. In the Gospel reading this Sunday we hear about the meeting between Jesus and John the Baptist at the Jordan River. We hear John telling us Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He is the one who I spoke about Yes, I have seen and I am the witness that he is the Chosen One of God.’

The first Christian communities saw a clear difference between John’s baptism that immersed people in the river Jordan  and Jesus’ baptism that communicated his own Spirit, to cleanse, renew and transform the heart of his followers. Without that Spirit of Jesus, the Church would simply close up shop and die. Only the Spirit of Jesus can put more truth and life into today’s Christianity and lead us to recover our true identity, letting go of paths that lead us further and further away from the Gospel and what it teaches.

Only that Holy Spirit of Jesus can give us light and energy to fire up the renewal that we need today so that we can also become Christ’s authoritative witnesses in the world. A believer can only be an authoritative witness if he or she lives in harmony with two of the Baptist’s evangelical qualities. Firstly, knowledge of Christ that is cultivated through prayer, the sacramental and ecclesial life and good friendships. Secondly, the constant attribute of the person who goes in search of the Jesus  is the virtue of humility because in everyone’s life, Christ must increase and we must decrease. We have all been baptized;  through our Baptism we have been called to be witnesses  to Jesus the chosen one of god. We are asked to point away from ourselves to the lord; as we lead others to know  the person of Jesus. None of us comes to him alone we all know people who help us along on our own faith journeys. Most people are moved when others share with them what really matters in their lives. Perhaps we have lost the courage to say any more about what matters to us as people who take faith seriously perhaps we doubt if anyone will care and yet so many do.  We should take courage to share what we believe.

With Saint John Henry Newman, we know that we believe because we love. In the power of that love, the Love of God made real in his Son let us share our belief with each other and everyone else as well. So that we can say with John the Baptist that Jesus is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, he is the Chosen One of God.’ Let us follow him,

THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD

After the arrival of the Wise Men on the feast of the Epiphany on Monday  we have come to the end of the Christmas season as we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord when Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan by John. This feast is also a reminder to us of our own baptism, most of us were baptised when we were babies and today we recommit ourselves to the promises that were made on our behalf when we renew our Baptismal Promises.

The figure of the Baptist is mysterious and captivating. He was the Precursor of Christ, not only two thousand years ago but in a sense also in our day. He is the voice, which makes us hear the Word which introduces us to the mystery of the redemption, who helps us to respond to the call to conversion, with humility and love. He helps us understand that the human person, every person in front of the Lord Jesus stands before the greatest mystery of our existence: the Mystery God made man! Our own Baptism calls us and empowers us to be Christ like that is what the word Christian means. Our humility can openly declare our trust in God the Father.

The great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas whose feast day is at the end of January spoke of times of grace when God enlivens people in special ways for different tasks and this is what baptism is all about the grace of god enlivening us to live out our new beginning  living life as people who are Christians that means Christ like.

The Holy Spirit is the power behind all our spiritual beginnings, when we are willing to begin, God is there as the grace  behind our going out into the sea of faith. There are beginnings that we know are important like baptisms, marriages and ordinations. We like to mark these beginnings as important, so we surround them with ceremony to give a sense of occasion and there is an atmosphere of rejoicing. The new beginnings that we make in our own lives may not mark the fulfilment of anyone’s prophecy, but they probably mark the fulfilment of someone’s hope. Sometimes we are so hesitant about making a new start that we end up in no-man’s-land waiting for more weather reports wondering what to do instead of getting on with it. This weekend as we think about our baptism we stop and think about our journey of faith as we celebrate beginning of Jesus ministry, we look at our own beginnings.

And if some of them look a bit shabby now or half-hearted, we take consolation from the Gospel challenge to begin again. There probably won’t be any doves flying or voices from heaven, but as people of God we make our beginnings like Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit. We are not alone. We make them in the power of the Spirit and in the love of the Father. So let us take courage to face our own rocky roads as the new year unfolds before all of us.