This Sunday recounts the Beatitudes offered by the Lord Jesus Christ in His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-10). The Beatitudes are the divinely imbued, natural desire for happiness, drawing us toward our fulfillment in union with God (CCC 1718). The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are a summary of the Way of the Lord, offering blessings in this life when we love God above all, unto fulfillment in the kingdom of heaven, in a ‘hope that does not disappoint’ (CCC 1697, 1716-1718, 1728).
The prophet Zephaniah offers hope to the ‘faithful remnant,’ the ‘anawim. In seeking humility, ‘anawah, and true justice, they will find shelter in the Lord. There, they will have a pure language and a pure morality, free of lies and deceit.
Today’s Word is all about following the Lord’s Will for us.
‘Behold, I have come to do Your Will, O God’ (Hebrews 10:9) ‘I delight to do Your Will, O My God’ (Psalm 40:8). Uniting ourselves in God’s Saving Love, God’s Will for us, should be our delight.
The Letter to the Hebrews (10:1-10) tells us that in God’s Will, we are sanctified, made Holy, through Christ’s perfect Sacrifice for our sake, once for all.
Jesus Christ’s Gospel is that whoever does the Will of God, becomes His brother or sister, a son or daughter of God, according to God’s Will (Mark 3:31-35).
In referring to his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, she became the Mother of God, the Mother of the Church, our mother as a model disciple, by following God’s Will for her, in her fiat: ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to Your Word’ (Luke 1:38).
The Lord’s Will for us is written on our hearts, and it is written in the ‘scroll of the Book,’ as our readings from the Bible tell us (Psalm 40:7-8).
Yet we have distractions in this world, making the Way of the Lord hard for us to see sometimes, making the Word of the Lord hard for us to hear.
Today is the Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, gentlemanly Doctor of the Church, ‘Doctor of Holy Living.’ He writes of ‘Finding God’s Will for You.’
Our Loving and Gracious God does not impose His Will upon us. As in our Lady’s fiat, He invites, he awaits our response in Faith, Hope, and Charity. God offers his counsels in friendship, in Fatherly Love and concern. God persuades and exhorts, God demands nothing that is unsuitable for our situation.
As Saint Francis de Sales writes, God Wills that in freedom, we may ignore, we may resist His Will for us. God contributes nothing to our disobedience. When we do follow God’s Will, God contributes His assistance, His inspiration, and His Grace for us. God’s Creative Love urges us along the Way, once we merely start on His Way.
Saint Francis de Sales has a great quote that ‘it is not so much the beginning but the end that counts,’ so worry less about our faltering missteps in the here and now, and trust in the eternal Will of God who cares for us. He reminds us that even Saint Peter had some faltering missteps, and crosses to bear, but Saint Peter fulfills his role in God’s Will and God’s Saving Plan for us.
If we are open to the wondrous beauty of God’s Word, we are reminded of His Word written on our hearts. We delight to read God’s Word in the Bible. We read the teachings of the Church in the Catechism which reminds us of the implications of the Christian life lived in Faith.
This is easier now than in Saint Francis de Sales’ times, we have access to initiatives like the Bible in a Year and the Catechism in a Year.
When we truly learn of the goodness of God, we desire that God be loved, honoured, and adored by all. When we love God, we cannot help but want to imitate the Lord. We really mean it when we pray the Our Father and pray ‘Your Will be done.’ We want to strive in virtue, toward the beatitudes of our Lord and Saviour, in Hope according to His promises for us.
The Lord will inspire our soul, and trusting in that inspiration that will accord with Church teachings, we will experience the Lord’s Peace and Charity.
From the Gospel Acclamation: ‘Blessed are you, Father, Lord, ruler of heaven and earth; you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.’
‘Whoever does the Will of God is My brother and sister and mother’ (Mark 3:35).
Pope Francis invites Catholics around the world to deepen their appreciation, love and faithful witness to God and His Word, especially on this Sunday “dedicated to the celebration, reflection, and proclamation of the Word of God; so that believers can understand the inexhaustible wealth which comes from this constant dialogue of God with His people” (Misericordia et misera, § 7).
This year we are invited to be courageous heralds of the Word, as with John: «We declare to you what we have seen» (1 John 1:3)
From the Nativity of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our saving Hope, we have heard of the fear of this Life from worldly powers, and of this fear of Light from the powers of darkness.
From the light of the Epiphany, King Herod hears of the fulfillment of the promise of the child Jesus, ‘God saves,’ Emmanuel, ‘God-with-us,’ yet Herod is ‘greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him’ (Matthew 2:3).
This week, we are recalling Jesus’ earthly ministry, where worldly powers continue to try to place limits on healing and Life, completely misunderstanding the meaning and purpose of a Sabbath offering restoration, re-creation. When Jesus heals in the synagogue on the Sabbath, to the glory of God, worldly powers conspire with each other to stop Him, to stop hope, to leave in despair and darkness those in need of healing.
Jesus continues His mission, ministering and healing, making Himself available to us in the peripheries.
Some people somehow hear what Jesus is doing (Mark 3:8). They dare to seek healing. They dare to hope. They dare to be free from slavery to worldly powers and passions.
In our Gospel, people seek our saving Lord from surrounding Galilee, from Judea and Jerusalem, from beyond the Jordan, from other countries.
They hope for the healing touch of Jesus Christ. Our Lord and Saviour continues to offer His healing touch in His Sacraments.
The disciples fear the crowds might crush our Lord (Mark 3:9). We cannot crush Christ. Christ crushes our fear, our faults, our failings. Christ crushes death. Christ heals us, restoring us to true Life.
The Letter to the Hebrews may be described as a homily, a profound, prayerful meditation on Christ and His eternal high priesthood for the sake of our salvation (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture).
God’s heavenly Temple is compared to Moses’ tabernacle, our sanctuaries, and even the Jerusalem Temple. That Temple was a wonder of the world, its stones resembling a white-capped mountain, its sanctuary adorned with gold. It fell, a generation after Jesus foretold its destruction to His disciples.
Christ’s eternal high priesthood is compared to the Levitical priesthood, which ended with the Temple.
Christian ministers participate in Christ’s true priesthood, during our limited time in service. Our ministries, our churches, have their allotted time.
For all these contrasts, Jesus Christ took on our humanity, serving us in humility, ministering and healing on the shores of Galilee.
At the end of His earthly ministry, He offered Himself up totally for us, in His Passion. In His Resurrection, He comes back for us, offering us His Peace.
The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of sacrifice. Jesus Christ offers Himself as the perfect Sacrifice, laying down His own Life for our sake, offering to God the Father all the love, trust, and obedience that God deserves from us, His children.
‘So great is His Sacrifice that, although it one and once offered for all, it suffices to eternity’ (Herveus, from the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture).
And so now, Jesus is not out on the peripheries in Galilee. Jesus Christ is in the true heavenly Temple making intercession for us, unto eternal Life. He ministers His healing touch through His Sacraments, and through us, His disciples.
From our Divine Office of Readings (Hebrews 4:15, 14): ‘Let us approach the throne of grace with perfect confidence; we shall find compassion and grace to help us in time of need. We do not have a high priest who is incapable of understanding our weaknesses…’
Jesus is always able to save those who approach God through Him, since He lives forever to make intercession for them (Hebrews 7:25).
From our penitential act: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, You are seated at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us, Lord have mercy.’
The Word of the Lord gives us a saving Hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. We are sustained in this present time by our faith and hope in the unchanging, eternal promise of Grace and Blessing by Christ, our Risen and Saving Lord.
We cannot realize our Lord’s Grace and Blessing through our changing laws, practices, everything, and everyone else based on our passions. That is a failure in Hope and Charity.
Christ’s Grace and Blessings change us from within, when we receive His offered gifts in faith, hope, and trust. Then, Christ gives us our Sabbath rest and His peace (Mark 2:23-28).
On this memorial of Saint Anthony the Great, we recall his change from within, upon hearing the Word of the Lord, impelling him to give up his possessions for solitude with the Lord in the wilderness. Even there, he attracted many disciples for the Lord. He founded a monasticism that has endured for millenia, to the present day, helping to conform disciples to our Lord and Saviour from within.
Saint Anthony of Egypt heard the Word of the Lord about the Way to true, eternal Life in Matthew 19: ‘if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, give to the poor, then come, follow Me… anyone losing homes or brothers or sisters or father or mother or spouse or children or property for the Lord’s sake, will inherit eternal Life.’
These are crosses. These are sufferings. Yet Christ asks us to take up our cross, to follow Him on the Way to Life, in Faith and Hope.
From today’s Word (Hebrews 6:10-20), God is not unjust, He will not overlook our work or the self-sacrifices we offer for Christ, to help those around us to be saints like Anthony. Christ will surely Bless us, according to His promise.
After celebrating the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord, we hear Isaiah’s Servant Song proclaim: ‘it is too little to show the Glory of the Lord to those who remain, to bring them back… it is to be a light to the nations, that the Gospel of the Lord our Saviour may reach to the ends of the earth‘ (Isaiah 49:3-6).
The divine light of the Epiphany does this, drawing in, uniting the Holy Family, the local poor, the shepherds, the magi kings from afar (Matthew 2:1-12).
John proclaims the Baptism of the Lord (John 1:29-34). After the light of the Epiphany, after the Holy Spirit alights on Jesus Christ at the beginning of His earthly ministry with us, we here in the Church move from the Season of Christmas and the Jesus’ infancy narratives, to what is called ‘ordinary time.’
Here is what ordinary time looks like, in the light of Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:13-17): The heavens are opened, the voice of God thunders ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I AM well pleased…’ Christ calls disciples by name, and they follow Him, along with the crowds hearing Him preach and minister. Jesus heals, restores spirits, restores souls to peace, the disciples exclaim ‘everyone is searching for you’ (Mark 1:21-38). This is ordinary time, for Christ our Lord, as it is to be for us, His disciples.
Most of us here are likely Baptised. Whether we remember it or not, in Baptism, we become a new creation in Christ, we are reborn through plunging in the water, receiving an outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit.
As Saint Paul states, in Baptism, we have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, called to offer gifts in the grace and peace offered by God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Corinthians 1:1-3). Saint Paul encourages us to be united in the service of God, in this One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We are called to be a holy community, we are called to the Communion of Saints as we profess in our Creed. This is our call, following from our consecration in Baptism. It is not too lofty.
From Isaiah’s Servant Song (Isaiah 49:3, 5-6), it is too little to be servant to those who remain. We are to be a light, offering the peace of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to testify, to make Him known, in our homes, through our work, in our service in community. We make of our works and deeds a prayerful offering, to sanctify our surroundings with our Lord’s Grace and peace. In this time around Christmas, people may be more receptive, in the Holy Spirit, to the grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we are at the point in John’s Gospel where ‘I myself did not know Him…’ (John 1:31), we can give thanks with our Psalm (40), ‘Your Law is written within my heart.’ As Saint Paul reminds, ‘you yourselves are a letter from Christ, to be known and read by all, not written on stone tablets but on human hearts, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God’ (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
Let us pray again with our Psalm (40): ‘Here I am, Lord, I come to do Your Will. I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord.’
We just celebrated the Epiphany of the Lord, the revelation of the Lord to all the nations, and to all the cosmos, through the guiding light of the star.
We just celebrated the Baptism of the Lord, the beginning of Christ’s recorded ministry with us here on earth, in what our current liturgical calendar calls ‘ordinary time.’
Here is what ordinary time is, in the light of Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:13-17): With Jesus’ Baptism as the Christ, the heavens are opened, the Spirit of God alights upon Him, the voice from heaven says ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I AM well pleased…’
Jesus calls disciples by name, immediately they follow Christ (Matthew 4:18-22). Jesus preaches and ministers to great crowds, and they follow him throughout the land (Matthew 4:23-25).
Jesus heals many, those with common or even incurable diseases, those with unclean spirits (Mark 1:21-45).
Jesus prays in the Holy Spirit with the Father, until we seek Him out, saying, ‘everyone is looking for you’ (Mark 1:37-38). ‘Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for this is why I came out.’
This is ‘ordinary time,’ for Christ our Lord, as it is to be for us, His disciples.
Christ comes to heal us and free us, from slavery to worldly powers or passions. Christ comes to free us even from fear of death, by destroying death in His Passion (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Christ comes to help us, and to heal us, taking on and healing our humanity.
He has not come to help angels, nor even give audience to fallen angels (Hebrews 2:16; Mark 1:32-34).
He comes to raise us up in His Resurrection.
If we find ourselves somehow afflicted, unable to host others, to serve in community, if we are depressed in Spirit, we can pray, we can call on our Lord to visit with us, as Christ visits with the mother of Simon Peter’s wife (Mark 1:29-31). She wants to host, she wants to serve as a disciple, she wants to witness to Christ’s ministry, but at that time she could not.
Christ the Divine Physician demonstrates the corporal work of mercy: ‘I was sick, and you visited me’ (Matthew 25:36; CCC§§1503-1505).
Christ continues to minister to us in His Sacraments, offering His healing strength in Communion with His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Eucharist; Reconciliation in Confession; and the Anointing of the Sick – ‘Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord’ (Jame 5:14).
Our Lord remains with us, as we recall from our Christmas Season, Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us (Matthew 1:23).
When we are healed, we are able to be raised up, to help others be raised up in Christ, following His ministry and teaching. This is true Christian Charity, in gratitude for Christ’s Saving work, in Faith, in Hope, in all of our ‘ordinary time.’
And so we give thanks and pray with our Psalm (105): ‘Glory in His Holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His presence continually. Give thanks to the Lord, call on His Name, make known His deeds among the peoples. Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; tell of all His wonderful works.’
The feast of the Baptism of the Lord fittingly follows from the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.
“Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. After Jesus was baptized, He came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:13-17).
“At the Jordan Jesus reveals himself with an extraordinary humility, reminiscent of the poverty and simplicity of the Child laid in the manger, and anticipates the sentiments with which, at the end of his days on earth, he will come to the point of washing the feet of the disciples and suffering the terrible humiliation of the Cross. The Son of God, the One who is without sin, puts himself among sinners, demonstrates God’s closeness to the process of the human being’s conversion. Jesus takes upon his shoulders the burden of sin of the whole of humanity, he begins his mission by putting himself in our place, in the place of sinners, in the perspective of the Cross” (Benedict XVI, Homily, January 10, 2010).
“We have seen his star in the East, and have come to adore the Lord” (Matthew 2:1-12).
In the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, Emmanuel’s light radiates beyond the Holy Family and the shepherds, that ‘tiny remnant of Israel,’ to illumine all nations (see Benedict XVI Homily January 6, 2006).
As in Isaiah’s prophecy, “nations shall come to Your light, and kings to the brightness of Your dawn…They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord” (Isaiah 60:3,6).
The magi kings offer these appropriate gifts in response to the glory of the Lord, shining to the heavens and dispelling the darkness over the earth and the people of the nations (Isaiah 60:1-2).
The Epiphany reveals God’s eternal plan of salvation to all people in all nations, beyond the initial prophecies to Israel (Ephesians 3:6).
Like the magi, we disciples of Christ are seers of His light and hearers of His Word in the Gospel. We must witness to the radiance of the kingdom of God, and freely offer to all the Word of God – the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 1: 1-18; John 14:6).
