"Extend your mercy towards others so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping."
--St. Vincent de Paul
"Extend your mercy towards others so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping."
--St. Vincent de Paul
January 7, 2021
Thursday after
Epiphany
Lectionary: 215
Beloved, we love God because
he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,”
but hates his brother, he is a liar;
for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen
cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This is the commandment we have from him:
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,
and everyone who loves the Father
loves also the one begotten by him.
In this way we know that we love the children of God
when we love God and obey his commandments.
For the love of God is this,
that we keep his commandments.
And his commandments are not burdensome,
for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.
Responsorial Psalm
R.
(see 11) Lord, every nation on
earth will adore you.
O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
From fraud and violence he shall redeem them,
and precious shall their blood be in his sight.
May they be prayed for continually;
day by day shall they bless him.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
May his name be blessed forever;
as long as the sun his name shall remain.
In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed;
all the nations shall proclaim his happiness.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Lord has sent
me to bring glad tidings to the poor
and to proclaim
liberty to captives.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit,
and news of him spread throughout the whole region.
He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all.
He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.******************************
Loving the Unlikable
Imagine that you're dying right now. You approach the gate between earth and heaven, and Jesus comes to greet you, but he looks exactly like the person you most dislike: that ex-spouse or scandalous priest or the employer who fired you or ______. Would you run to him or away from him? Could you embrace him, or would you rather punch him in the nose?
In today's first reading, we read that anyone who claims to love God while hating another is a liar. If we can't love someone who is tangibly present to us, how can we love Jesus who is invisible? If we won't give love to a person we can touch, how can we give love to the Holy Spirit? And if we don't love every child of the Father who cherishes all of his creations, how can we feel his love for us, especially when we have low self-esteem?
To think we can love God but not that jerk who hurt us so badly is a misconception. The extent to which we love others is the extent to which we love God, because what we do to others we are also doing to our Father who created them and to our Savior who died for them.
Love is like water in a kitchen faucet. When the tap is closed and you place your hand on the faucet, you cannot feel the water inside it, although it is there, waiting to be released. Turn the tap on to make the water pour out, and now your hand on the pipe can feel the vibration of flowing water. God's love is always within us, but we cannot feel it unless we're pouring it out onto others.
Loving the unlikable doesn't mean staying close to those who abuse us, but if we're close to God, we care about them as he does. Loving the unlikable means caring about their eternal souls. It means forgiving them and moving on instead of remaining stuck in our anger while waiting for them to repent. It means praying for them, not just to ask God to change them so our life can become easier, but so that they will enter more fully into God's love for their own benefit.
Loving the unlikable requires that we fix our gaze on Jesus, for we trust that God will make good come from everything. It means responding to their evils with God's goodness while maintaining boundaries of healthy love.
When we love the unlikable, Jesus comforts us with words from today's Gospel reading: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and I share this with you, my precious friend! The Father has anointed me to bring glad tidings to you, to proclaim liberty to you in your captivity, to give sight to you when troubles blind you, and to set you free from the misery caused by evil."
When we love the unlikable, our joy doesn't come from seeing others change. Our joy comes from knowing God's deep, abiding love as we receive his warm, comforting embrace.
Today's Prayer
Beloved Father, I beg You, may Your love produce faithfulness in me, and may my faithfulness to You be poured as true love onto my neighbors. Amen.
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God Bless You.....
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