Blog RSS Feed

Both today’s first reading, taken from Nehemiah, and Luke’s Gospel, describe the public reading of Sacred Scripture which challenges the hearers to make a “fresh beginning” with a new outlook. In the first reading, after rebuilding the Temple and restoring the city, Ezra leads the people in a “Covenant renewal” ceremony. Returning to the Temple after many years of exile, with the active assistance of a few Levite helper-priests, Ezra reads and interprets the Law to the Jews gathered before the Water Gate from early in the morning till mid-day on the first day of the Jewish year.

Cana and our readiness for a miracle With feast of the Baptism of the Lord we completed the Christmas season. Now the Liturgy invites us to enter into the Ordinary Season of the year. There are three different years of Ordinary Time readings, one for each year in the three year cycle, each having a simple name such as A, B, or C. In every one of these years one particular “synoptic” Gospel writer is featured, Mark, Matthew, or Luke. We are now in year C, which we began in Advent. Ordinary Time for this year will feature the Gospel according to Luke. The following words will be proclaimed before the Gospel reading each Sunday: “A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.”

Today marks the formal end of the Church’s Christmas season. Jesus' birth into earthly life has now been sufficiently celebrated. His public life comes next and his baptism begins it, even though the vestment color is still white. George Caird in his Pelican commentary on the Gospel of Luke asked this question, “Why was Jesus baptized?” The New Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The fruit of baptism or baptismal grace is a rich reality that includes the forgiveness of original sin and personal sins, birth into the new life by which man becomes an adoptive son of the Father, a member of Christ’s Body and a temple of the Holy Spirit,” (CCC no. 1279). The New Testament of the Bible is very consistent also that Jesus has no sins of his own to confess.

The feast of the Epiphany holds a magic spell on everyone who reads the story. The story evokes a plethora of questions to the reader. Who were the Magi? Which is the country of their origin? How many were they? How long did they travel? Why these special gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for a newborn child? What happened to them after they reached back to their country? Is it possible that the bones of the Magi — Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar — are kept in a golden tomb in the largest Gothic cathedral in Europe? An ancient tradition recounts the tale of how the bodies of the Magi who visited the Christ child found their way to their final resting place in Germany’s Cologne Cathedral. We may not get convincing answers to any of the questions. But the story gives an insight into humanity’s search for meaning and purpose for life.

Greetings and God’s blessings on you and your family on this Christmas and Feast of the Holy Family. Perhaps, for some, Christmas seems to take a long time coming and then ends quickly. Well, we don’t let this happen in the Catholic Church. Like Garfield hugging the Christmas tree to keep Jon from throwing it out, we hold on to the celebration all the way until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, on January 9th. Our focus, now, is on the time from Christmas to the Epiphany, which includes today’s Feast of the Holy Family, Solemnity of Mary on January 1st, and next Sunday’s Solemnity of the Epiphany.

It is traditionally believed that Mary received the message of Elizabeth’s pregnancy while residing at her home in Nazareth. The village of Ein Karem is considered the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist. Ein Karem is situated on the western slopes of Jerusalem. Ein Karem is approximately 5 miles southwest of present-day downtown Jerusalem. It is approximately 80 miles from Nazareth. Luke implies Mary traveled alone, but most likely she traveled with a caravan for safety. The home of Elizabeth is about 2,474 feet above sea level, while Nazareth is at 1,138 feet. She journeyed through Galilee, Samaria, the Jordan River Valley, and finally through the hills of Judea. This means Mary had to trek uphill nearly 1,336 feet in elevation!

Today is called “Gaudete” Sunday because today’s Mass begins with the Entrance Antiphon, “Gaudete in Domino semper” (“Rejoice in the Lord always”). Today we light the rose candle of the Advent wreath, and the priest wears rose vestments, to express our communal joy in the coming of Jesus, as our Savior. Advent’s themes of happiness and hope can annoy someone who is hurting. When you are burdened with the chaff of ego or the weight of anxieties, forced joy and canned happiness disgust the best of persons.

Each year, the second and the third Sundays in Advent center on John the Baptist, reminding us that if we want to prepare properly for the coming of Jesus we need to listen to the Baptizer’s message. The Evangelists realized the importance of John’s message. Hence, all four of them wrote about John’s preaching, while only two of them, Mathew and Luke described the nativity of Christ. Following the style of ancient historians, Luke dates the appearance of John according to the ruling powers of the day. His Gospel heightens the paradoxical affirmation of hope despite almost impossible odds. So, Christ’s imminent coming is announced in the first chapter, in the ominous shadow of Tiberius’s rule. The Evangelist notes that Pontius Pilate is procurator; Herod is tetrarch; Annas and Caiaphas are high priests—all names that bode more doom than deliverance. These men are the mighty and the dangerous, the important and the awesome. Annas and Caiaphas had been illegally put into their positions by the Roman authorities, and constantly used their power to line their own pockets and increase their own authority. Annas was even sometimes called a viper who hissed or whispered in the ears of judges and politicians to influence their decisions. Corruption infested the holiest of positions!

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which is also the first Sunday of the new liturgical year. The Advent season includes the four Sundays that precede Christmas. It is a common phenomenon that because of the many celebrations, dinner preparations and shopping, we tend to be in a continual sense of fatigue. We might forget that Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of the Lord. In this season, we recall two central elements of our faith: the final coming of the Lord in glory and the incarnation of the Lord in the birth of Jesus. The key themes of the Advent season are watchful waiting, preparation, and justice.

In the middle of St Peter’s square in Rome, there stands a great obelisk. About four and half thousand years old, it originally stood in the temple of the sun in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis. It was bought to Rome by the dreaded Emperor Caligula, and it was set right in the middle of the equally dreaded Circus of Nero, on Vatican hill. It was in that Circus that St Peter was martyred, and the obelisk may well have been the last thing on this Earth that Peter saw. On top of the obelisk there now stands a cross. In ancient times, there was a gold ball representing, of course, the sun. Now there is a cross however, the cross of Christ, and on the pedestal of the obelisk there are two inscriptions. The first of them is in Latin, “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat”, which translated means, Christ has conquered, Christ now rules, Christ now reigns supreme. The other inscription is, “The Lion of Judah has conquered.” So here we have the language of victory. Christianity has triumphed by the power of the cross and triumphed over even the greatest power that the ancient world had known, the Roman Empire, and here in the middle of St Peter’s square stands the obelisk bearing those triumphant inscriptions.

Can ‘end times’ be good times? There is a big hype in the media today about the “end of the world.” Scientists speak of it as the end of the planet earth. They point out that objects in space, bigger than a mountain, may stray from their orbits and strike the earth with a force more powerful than that generated by nuclear weapons. The impact will greatly disturb the earth’s ecosystems and cause the death of species, including human beings. If the giant projectiles miss, the cosmos has other ways of crushing or annihilating the planet. But scientists say that none of these will take place earlier than a billion years from now. There is no reason, you might say, to start worrying this for a minute. The Liturgical Year that is ending wants us to focus our attention on the ‘end times’ in a different way. All of us are waiting for the second coming of Jesus. This will be the day of His return. We recite the Creed at Mass and proclaim that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” The New Testament writers used the Greek word Parousia which means the arrival and presence of a king, to describe this second coming of Jesus. When this day comes, Jesus will be acknowledged as Lord with the dead rising and all human beings judged in the presence of the glorified Christ, our King. When is he coming? Nobody knows. We only must wait. But wait patiently and meaningfully.

Giving away bread when you are hungry! Reflecting on the stories of widows I am reminded of a Movie project I accepted to produce while in Kenya. The script was written by Sr. Dr Dominic Dipio, a Ugandan nun, who was a literary icon from Makarere University. The movie “A Meal to Forget” based on a real event, told the poignant story of a father who took the lives of his children with a special meal rather than see them die slowly of starvation. Poverty is real in many parts of the world and the poor must make hard choices. The first reading and the Gospel today present poor widows who took the bold decisions and gave their whole lives and means of livelihood to God.  Today’s liturgy also reveals some important facts about the poor.

One of the striking features of the Gospel narratives is that all the four Gospels shift to a high gear of conflicts and confrontations in the last week of Jesus’ life. Jesus was confronted by several groups of religious leaders—first by the chief priest, scribes and elders who had questioned His authority; then by the Pharisees who tried to turn the people against Him by ensnaring Him in a controversy; and finally, by the Sadducees, who tried to make Him look foolish with trick questions. In each case, Jesus responded with a wisdom and authority so powerful all opponents were stunned in amazement. They had come to battle wits with the Son of God; and lost in every encounter. A scribe, who believed in both the written Law and the oral tradition, was pleased to see the defeat Jesus had dealt to the Sadducees who had presented for solution the hypothetical case of a woman who had married seven husbands. Who, they had asked Jesus, would be her husband in the world to come? To the scribes, the Mosaic Law was the greatest, fullest, and most perfect revelation of God’s will that could ever be given. However, in the Judaism of Jesus’ day there was a double tendency: to expand the Mosaic Law into hundreds of rules and regulations and to condense the 613 precepts of the Torah into a single sentence.

Jericho was one of the places that Jesus made a point to visit on his trips to Jerusalem. His last journey to the region before his trial and execution was no different. Jericho is about 15 miles northeast of Jerusalem near the Jordan River. It is known as one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It is also the first city that the Israelites conquered when they arrived in Canaan after their escape from Egypt some 1,400 years earlier.

Today’s liturgy is about service. In the opening prayer we ask for “strength and joy in serving God as followers of Christ.” The First Reading is from the fourth servant song of Second Isaiah: the prophet sings of one who “gives his life as an offering”. The Gospel is about disciples who want to be important. Jesus teaches them this lesson: “whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all”. With a mindset of discipleship as a spiritual path we might be surprised at the audacity of James and John in today’s gospel who dared to voice their selfish ambitions. They felt that they should sit at the right hand and left hand of the Lord when Jesus came into His Glory. They wanted to lord it over the other disciples. Or at least they wanted it to be clear that they were much better than the others. Jesus told them that they were clueless. They didn’t understand where greatness came from.

The readings today really hit us to the core of our lives. They ask us to consider where we find meaning in life. The second reading from Hebrews 4 says that the Word of God is a two-edged sword, by that it means one that is very sharp and very strong. It cuts into us and uncovers the thoughts, reflections, and desires of our hearts. We read in the Gospels of so many people meeting Jesus and going away completely transformed. So many people who met Jesus were healed of illnesses, found meaning and went away totally different persons. Many people who met Jesus went away happy. But in the Gospel today a man meets Jesus and goes away sad (Mark 10:22). It is the only time in all the Gospels that someone who was called by Jesus went away sad. This meeting between the man and Jesus showed such promise and yet ended so badly.

The readings of this weekend bring to forefront some of the burning issues of Jesus’ time and they are also very pertinent in our own time. All three readings taken together spells out the Creator’s plan for the world and human beings. At the same time these readings have been misinterpreted or distorted to fit the narratives of various groups with vested ideologies. The creation story of the Genesis contains within it the beautiful and harmonious inter relationship of the creation with God as the center. By putting humanity at the top rung of creation with the privilege of ‘naming’ the creatures, God is entrusting the stewardship of his creation to an intelligent being who is only ‘just lower than the angels’. This is not dangerous anthropocentrism, distracting us from the biocentrism that the future of life on planet Earth demands. This story is about neither bio- nor anthropocentrism; it is about Theo-centrism. It is about the relationship among creatures that stems from our relationship with the Creator. We can never authoritatively speak about the care of the universe and human responsibility without reference to the Creator.

There is a battle going on in the lives of each of us, a battle going on for the lives of each of us, a battle between good and evil. At the end of that battle in the next life we will either hear Jesus say, “you are mine” or hear Satan say, “you are mine.” Through his cross Jesus has won the battle but it is up to us now to accept his grace and live as those redeemed by Jesus. There are manifestations of grace and manifestations of evil all around us, but we can take the side of Jesus in the battle for our lives by overcoming sin and temptation.

If you were to plan out the ideal future for yourself, what would it look like? Imagine if you were not constrained by budget or resources. Imagine if you could pick to do anything you wanted, to go anywhere you wanted, and enjoy any activity that you wanted. Imagine the greatest experience you could possibly have. What would that be? Most people would immediately think about indulging in the greatest pleasures imaginable. A life of the most luxurious accommodations, the best food, the most beautiful scenery and the most relaxing and enjoyable time possible. But would that truly be the “ideal future for yourself?” Will that bring you to greatness?

Many Jewish scholars struggle with this passage from Isaiah in our first reading because it clearly points to Jesus. Although they have offered other contenders such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, or even the Jewish people as the ‘suffering servant’. After all, throughout their history, Jews have been despised and rejected. However, none of the contenders appear to fit the substitutionary roles the suffering servant plays. None of those contenders can heal us by their wounds and restore us to God. Again, the reference is to a single person. This passage also leaves the Old Testament readers with no excuse. Jesus made it obvious that he was the suffering servant. Even if people never read the New Testament, they can see from the example Jesus gave that no one matches the Suffering Servant quite as well as he does.