The texts from Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with healing divisions in communities and discerning how our talents can be of service to the community.
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| Community service |
The reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah declares the righteous reign of the Coming King.
* [9:3] Day of Midian: when God used the judge Gideon to deliver these northern territories from Midianite oppression (Jgs 6–7).1
The psalmist longs for the presence of God in the Temple and protection from all enemies.
* [Psalm 27] Tradition has handed down the two sections of the Psalm (Ps 27:1–6; 7–14) as one Psalm, though each part could be understood as complete in itself. Asserting boundless hope that God will bring rescue (Ps 27:1–3), the psalmist longs for the presence of God in the Temple, protection from all enemies (Ps 27:4–6). In part B there is a clear shift in tone (Ps 27:7–12); the climax of the poem comes with “I believe” (Ps 27:13), echoing “I trust” (Ps 27:3).2
The passage from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians criticizes the community over divisions in the Church.
* [1:13–17] The reference to baptism and the contrast with preaching the gospel in v. 17a suggest that some Corinthians were paying special allegiance to the individuals who initiated them into the community.3
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus begins His ministry in Galilee and calls the first Disciples and ministers to crowds of people.
* [4:12–17] Isaiah’s prophecy of the light rising upon Zebulun and Naphtali (Is 8:22–9:1) is fulfilled in Jesus’ residence at Capernaum. The territory of these two tribes was the first to be devastated (733–32 B.C.) at the time of the Assyrian invasion. In order to accommodate Jesus’ move to Capernaum to the prophecy, Matthew speaks of that town as being “in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali” (Mt 4:13), whereas it was only in the territory of the latter, and he understands the sea of the prophecy, the Mediterranean, as the sea of Galilee.4
Barbara Dilly comments that what helps her to focus on the light of Christ today are Matthew’s focus on what Jesus proclaimed regarding living in the Kingdom of God. Jesus was about healing diseases.
In my experience, the greatest disease we have in our world today is the disease of hate. It cuts through families, communities, and nations. It has placed the world in great darkness.Jesus understands this. He knows our darkness and how much it brings us to despair and death. He calls us to repent, or turn away, to focus away from the darkness and to focus on the light, which is the kingdom of heaven in our midst. Look for the light! In this new year, I pray that we will draw on the courage of our faith to share the Gospel light of Christ with others. We can share the good news that the kingdom of heaven is indeed at hand!5
Don Schwager quotes “The true light of revelation to the Gentiles,” by Chromatius (died 406 AD).
"The Evangelist commemorated in this passage the prophet's words: 'Beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light' (Matthew 4:15-16) In what darkness? Certainly in the profound error of ignorance. What great light did they see? The light concerning which it is written: 'He was the true light that illumines everyone who comes into this world' (John 1:9) This was the light about which the just man Simeon in the Gospel declared, 'A light of revelation to the Gentiles and a glory for your people Israel' (Luke 2:32). That light had arisen according to what David had announced, saying, 'A light has arisen in the darkness to the upright of heart' (Psalm 112:4)."Also, Isaiah demonstrated that light about to come for the enlightenment of the church when he said, 'Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you' (Isaiah 60:1). Concerning that light also Daniel noted, 'It reveals the profound and hidden things, knowing those things which are in darkness and the light is with it' (Daniel 2:22), that is, the Son with the Father, for even as the Father is light, so too is the Son light. And David also speaks in the psalm: 'In your light shall we see light' (Psalm 36:9), for the Father is seen in the Son, as the Lord tells us in the Gospel: 'Who sees me, sees the Father' (John 14:9) From the true light, indeed, the true light proceeded, and from the invisible the visible. “He is the image of the invisible God,” as the apostle notes (Colossians 1:15)." (excerpt from TRACTATE ON MATTHEW 15.1)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on Isaiah 8:23–9:3 recalls that on September 30 of last year, Pope Francis issued a letter declaring that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time was to be set aside every year as the “Sunday of the Word of God...” In his letter, Pope Francis spoke about how we cannot read the Bible in the same way we read any other book. “Since faith comes from hearing,” he wrote, “and what is heard is based on the word of Christ, believers are bound to listen attentively to the word of the Lord, both in the celebration of the liturgy and in their personal prayer and reflection” (Aperuit Illis, 7).
God has a message just for you today, and that message may well be embedded in the readings you will hear at Mass. It will be something personal and inspiring. No one else will hear these readings in exactly the same way that you will. No one else will receive exactly the same message that you will. So practice the attentive listening that Pope Francis described. What is he saying to you? How will the “great light” of God’s word shine in your heart today (Isaiah 9:1)?7
Friar Jude Winkler fleshes out the history of Zebulun and Naphtali describing the background that had the area designated as unclean. The factionalism in Corinth is contrary to the call for Christians to use talents for the good of the community. Friar Jude reminds us that the converted Pharisee who edited Matthew’s Gospel used “Kingdom of Heaven” to avoid using “Kingdom of God”.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments the alongside all our knowing must be the equal and honest “knowing that I do not know.” That’s why the classic schools of prayer spoke of both kataphatic knowing, through images and words, and apophatic knowing, through silence and symbols. Apophatic knowing allows God to fill in all the gaps in an “unspeakable” way, beyond words and within the empty spaces between them. The apophatic way of knowing was largely lost to Western Christianity during the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and we have suffered because of it. As the churches wanted to match the new rationalism of the Enlightenment with what felt like solid knowing, they took on the secular mind instead of what Paul calls “knowing spiritual things in a spiritual way” (1 Corinthians 2:13). We dismissed the unique, interior access point of the mystics, poets, artists, and saints.
Strangely enough, this unknowing offers us a new kind of understanding, though we have an old word for it: faith. Faith is a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to know for certain and yet doesn’t dismiss knowledge either. With faith, we don’t need to obtain or hold all knowledge because we know that we are being held inside a Much Larger Frame and Perspective. As Paul puts it, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known myself” (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is a knowing by participation with—instead of an observation from a position of separation. It is knowing subject to subject instead of subject to object.
It took me years to understand this, even though it is straight from the Franciscan school of philosophy. Love must always precede knowledge. The mind alone cannot get us there, which is the great arrogance of most Western religion. Prayer in my later years has become letting myself be nakedly known, exactly as I am, in all my ordinariness and shadow, face to face, without any masks or religious makeup. Such nakedness is a falling into the unified field underneath reality, what Thomas Merton (1915–1968) called “a hidden wholeness,” [1] where we know in a different way and from a different source.8
Our talents may be rational or mystic or both. Our invitation from Jesus is to be His Light through our actions in and for the community.
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