Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today is the beginning of Catholic Schools Week and while this is a poignant moment for us, we can celebrate the value of what has been solid Catholic Education for the past fifty years in our parish.  We can celebrate how the Word of God reveals the Father’s Plan to us at different times and in different ways throughout our history. We can celebrate the struggle of each family to obey that Word and bring the mission of Christ to completion in our parish.

 

 The Gospel reveals Jesus plunging into his public ministry. He begins in Nazareth where he was born, in the synagogue where we left him last week when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

 

Today we see the reaction of the Nazarenes who were being confronted with the truth about Jesus. They became angry because they were afraid of the change Jesus was effecting in people’s lives. “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Nevertheless, Jesus passes through their confusion and fear. We can see him creating a wind as walks by, the breath of the Holy Spirit as the people suddenly realize that they should not be afraid. Paul says, “When I was a child I used to talk like a child, think as a child, and reason a child but now I put aside childish things and come to understand that faith, hope and love remain through all my life, the greatest of these is love.”

 

My dear friends, people can still see, touch, and feel. Christians can still hear with the word of God, perhaps in different ways and in different times, so perhaps the best thing to do today is to invest, in our own way, the gifts God has given us to use, in affecting the lives and hearts of our children, our parishioners, our neighbors and our friends.

 

This Catholic Schools week is a reminder of gifts God has given to us. Our gratitude shows here by the reception of a worthy communion and our determination to become better witnesses to the Gospel, by expressing more obviously our own encounters with Christ.

 

We cannot be afraid to allow Christ to move in us around us and through us!

 

For those of us who follow Christ, even though imperfectly, we can be, for the mute-words; for the doubtful, the answer; for the blind, light; for the deaf, voice; for the weary, rest; for the desperate, hope; for the alienated, unity; for the restless, peace.

 

Listen; and in the quiet moments you give God, and in the memory He has given you, you will hear words to guide your heart and mind: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not rude. Love never fails.

 

These words are nearer to you than your own breath. You know them; you only have to live them!