Thursday - January 06, 2022
“Jesus Christ, Lord of all things! You see my heart, you know my desires. Possess all that I am—you alone. I am your sheep; make me worthy to overcome the devil.”
--St. Agatha
TODAY'S READINGS
THURSDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
Lectionary: 215
Reading 1 1 Jn 4:19–5:4
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 72:1-2, 14 and 15bc, 17
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 Lk 4:18
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 Lk 4:14-22
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.
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IS OBEYING THE COMMANDMENTS EASY FOR YOU?
Our first reading today tells us that God's commandments are not burdensome. Well, have you ever found God's commandments to be difficult? I sure have! It is a burden to examine my conscience and force myself to change. Ahh, but John shares with us the secret to making it easy: Our faith.
Faith conquers all, he says. So, do you have enough faith to conquer all temptations, stay pure and resist evil? Not me!
Therefore, we can conclude that, although we do have faith in God, our faith is too little. Right? No. We were given the Holy Spirit during our baptisms, and both Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 say that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which means that we have all the faith that God has! An awesome thought, so what's missing? Why do we do things that are not holy?
Look at what John is talking about in the whole of the first reading: Love. This is the key to preventing the commandments from feeling burdensome.
If we know that God loves us unconditionally, regardless of how sinful or holy we are, then we naturally want to love him with our whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind. And when we love him that much, we naturally want to unite ourselves to him in loving everyone whom he loves, even the jerks (I mean those irritating, errr, precious children of God who are causing us problems). When we truly love others, we are less likely to sin against them.
If we try to obey God's commandments simply because he says so, it is a burden. Holiness is then as difficult for us as it was for the folks of the Old Testament who lived by the letter of the law without the help of the Spirit of the law, the Holy Spirit. But only Jesus could succeed in fulfilling the law perfectly, and he added love into the equation. Whereas the old laws allowed people to demand an eye for an eye when they were wronged, Jesus commanded: "Do good to your enemies." And he gave us his Holy Spirit so that we could succeed at this.
If we desire to obey God's commandments because we want to remain united to his love, and if we rely on the Holy Spirit to help us love others unconditionally (sometimes we need supernatural love), it becomes much easier to resist sin.
In fact, we often don't even feel tempted. We enjoy doing good to our enemies, we consider ourselves blessed when persecuted by jerks, and we have great patience because we notice that those jerks are really more wounded than we are, and instead of getting angry, we feel sorry for them.
In every situation, including the most burdensome, we need to ask: "What would Jesus do?" Better yet, ask: "What would LOVE do?" This melts the weight of the burden.
Today's Prayer
Pour, Lord, the anointing of Your Spirit upon me so Your plans will be fulfilled and I will be an instrument of Your love for my brothers and sisters. Amen.
The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”
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