1LC19. Deuteronomy 26:4-10. The nation of God’s Chosen People started as a small household that lived in Egypt as oppressed aliens that the Lord made into a nation of numerous people. Moses said, “God ‘heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonder; and bringing us into this country, he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.’” For those who entrust themselves to God, who respect him as God over them, he uses his power for their benefit because they have given themselves over to belong to him. They are his.

Luke 4:1-13. After his baptism, Jesus “was led by the spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.” Jesus is both truly human and truly divine. In his divinity he is infinite and cannot experience a lack of anything, in other words, God cannot be hungry. However, in his humanity Jesus was definitely hungry. As the Israelites spent forty years in the desert in order to learn to be God’s People, so too Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days as a learning experience for Jesus in his humanity. Jesus in his humanity needed to learn just as any human needs to learn. He learned to be dependent on the Holy Spirit who filled him. It was the Spirit who gave him the strength and wisdom to defeat Satan. Without the Spirit Jesus in his humanity was no match for the devil, nor are we. The temptations that Jesus experienced were genuine and real. The devil knew well that he truly could tempt Jesus in his humanity but trying to tempt God would have been an absurdity. As in the first reading, God used his infinite power to defend those who belong to him. God would never allow Jesus to sin and will never allow us to sin as long as we live our lives in him.

Romans 10:8-13. “For the Scripture says, No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” Paul wrote, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Only if we consistently put our salvation in the hands of the Savior will we be saved. He will never fail us but we must pray always that we will not fail him. We must always be a people who live only out of his provident goodness, never neglecting to go to him for our needs and as the source of our daily life.

8C19. Sirach 27:4-7. The Book of Sirach is one of the wisdom books of the Old Testament. This wisdom helps us to see as the Lord sees and not be blinded or misguided by the way the world sees that makes what is bad to appear desirable and acceptable. What we say reveals what we think, what the mind sees or believes to be the truth or reality. Our reading says, “So too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind.”

Luke 6:39-45. Jesus saw that all too often people criticized others but that they were guilty of far worse, showing that they were blind to their own guilt. It is only natural to show partiality in judging ourselves generously and others overbearingly and negatively. It is only by living our lives the God who sees fully and truly, can we be just as God is just. Jesus says in our reading, “For every tree is known by its own fruits.” Later in the text he says, “For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” What is the life or life-giving force of our hearts? What fills our hearts that shows itself in our words, actions, emotions, facial expressions and attitudes? Growing in communion with God whose Body we eat and whose Blood we drink makes Jesus the life of our hearts. Living Jesus as the life of our hearts, begging him to be the Lord of our hearts, Jesus, with us working alongside of him, cultivates us to become the good tree bearing only good fruit. What joy it brings to grow more and more in the Lord!

1 Corinthians 15:54-58. What we cannot do God can. Sin and death have been crushed through Christ. “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Know “that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

7C19. 1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23. Opportunities! Should we take advantage of them despite the risks that might be involved? In giving us opportunities what does the Lord want of us? God had given David the opportunity to win the war of who is King in this world or the heavenly, moral war of who proves himself a son of God the Father and not a son of the ways of this world. David acted out of a righteousness and love that was not of this world and it ways, but of God’s ways. In whose eyes should we achieve victory: in God’s eyes or the eyes of people who think in the customary ways of this world? By whose measure do we measure? The real victory belonged to David because he chose to please God above all.

Luke 6:27-38. The title of this Gospel should be: “Be love as God is love.” It is by his measure of love that we should measure and not by any worldly measure. Jesus offers a way of thinking that contradicts the ways of this world: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” In other words, love as God loves. It is impossible for God to hate because the essence of God is love. He must always be who he is. Human hatred for God cannot make God hate in return. At the point of one’s death he can allow us to live in our eternal hatred and go to hell because that was what we freely chose, even though it never was what he wanted. Hell is a state of being that those who choose it create for themselves by choosing to live without the only source of eternal goodness. God never sends anyone to hell because he hates us, although we may have given him every reason to hate us. God acts only to help us go to heaven by helping us to become love as he is love. “Be merciful, just as your heavenly Father is merciful.” Nonetheless we have been given by God the power to reject his merciful love because God did not create a world of robots, since robots do not have the capacity to love nor become love.

Jesus said, “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.” We leave to God what belongs to God alone. Judging belongs only to God. We can certainly recognize evil when we see it but must leave to God alone all final decisions. We must pray for those who seem to have chosen to be evil to the end of their lives. God expects the love that he pours into us to make us as he is: truly loving children of the loving God who is our Father.

1 Corinthians 15:45-49. Paul writes, “It is written, The first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit.” Adam received life; Jesus gives life. Because Jesus is not only human but divine, he is infinite love. His love gives life that can never end, because his love can never die. Jesus gives to those who choose to receive it, life that can never die because his gift of love to us can never die. Paul ends this Sunday’s epistle with the words: “Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.” The image of the earthly one is a creature of the earth. In Genesis 3:19b, c, God says to Adam, “You return to the ground from which you were taken; for you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.” (I deleted the word ‘until’ for a better flow.) From our creation out of the dirt of this earth, our inheritance from Adam is to go back to that from which we came. However, Jesus, by his death on the cross and resurrection to new life, has given us a spiritual life that has raised us up to a life beyond anything this earth can give. In John 17:16, Jesus said, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” To those who have given themselves over to Jesus as the source of their life, Jesus’ love for us gives us the other-worldly spiritual life. In John 17:26, Jesus said, “I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I them.” Jesus’ life is in us when we live in never-ending communion with him.

6C19. Jeremiah 17:5-8 & Psalm1. In whom or what is our life rooted: the things and people of this world or in God? If it is in the things or people of this world, then we are “a barren bush in the desert,” cursed, worthless and doomed. If it is in God, there we are like “a tree planted near running water,” fruitful and green.

Luke 6:17, 20-26. Matthew’s beatitudes emphasize the spiritual; whereas Luke’s beatitudes center on one’s immediate earthly situation. It may seem to people who have a worldly perspective on everyday life that what is important is what things and what friends you have that draw admiration from the surrounding world. Being blessed in the sight of this world where in time everything will rot or simply pass away into oblivion is to be cursed by not having what endures through all time. This world obscures and perverts what is truly valuable because its vision is myopic or short-sighted, seeing only what is near and physical and not what is spiritual and eternal. It seems to this world that God sees things in a manner that is upside down and maybe even inside out. However, God is the only measure of what is genuinely true and real. The world’s vision obliterates the truth in order to have whatever pleases it. For the world truth and reality only challenge self-interests and so must be disposed of.

1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20. Paul writes here to reassert that Jesus physically arose from the dead. Paul is challenging the teaching that some were putting forth that Jesus’ resurrection was only the fact that he is remembered in peoples’ hearts and mind but that Jesus did not actually, physically arise from the dead. This is once again truth and reality seen and rearranged through a worldly vision and not God’s. Paul is clear to point out to the Corinthians that our faith is in a God who has power over death and other natural forces. If Jesus arose only in peoples’ memories, that will be our fate too. However, our faith is in the God who is eternal, on whom time has no bonds. As he is eternal, he shares his never ending life and love with us, his sons and daughters over whom death has no power.

5C19. Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8. Isaiah, on feeling that the frame of the house shook and filled with smoke, cried out, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips.” The seraphim touched the mouth of Isaiah with an ember taken from the altar and said, “Your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.” When the Lord asked, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” Isaiah responded, “Here I am; send me!” Before the great display of the power of the Lord, Isaiah felt his own profound unworthiness because of his sinfulness. However, it was by God’s power that he was made worthy and so enabled Isaiah to be God’s prophet to his people.

Luke 5:1-11. Jesus, knowing what he planned to do, got into Simon’s boat so that he could preach to the crowd that was on the shore. Jesus then ordered Simon to put out into deep water and lower the nets for a catch. Simon, yet to be named Peter, acquiesced to Jesus’ command despite the fact that he thought the effort would be fruitless because they had gotten nothing after fishing all night. Simon, stunned at the sudden great catch of fish to the point that their nets were tearing, “fell at the knees of Jesus and said, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’” “Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.’” As with Isaiah, God turned sinful men into people who were missionaries worthy to fulfil God’s calling to bring people into God’s kingdom. “When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”

1 Corinthians 15:1-11. When we read the epistles, it should be with the mind that Paul is responding to some issue or need in the church community to which he writes. In other words, we only know one part of the dialog. Next week we read further that the issue he is responding to this week is that some said that there was no resurrection of the dead. This week Paul lays the groundwork to assert the genuine resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Paul says that Jesus himself appeared to many after the resurrection, including to Paul himself. Then Paul digresses to how unworthy Paul was to be personally called by Jesus, since Paul intensely “persecuted the church of God.” Paul asserts that it was and is by the grace of God that he is what he is, a very effective missionary for the church of God. As with Isaiah and Peter, now with Paul, God turns a sinner into a person who was a missionary worthy to fulfil God’s calling to bring people into God’s kingdom. Without God no one can be holy; with God we cannot be anything but holy.

4C19. Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19. God in his divinity is without the limitations that we live with and take for granted. He is without beginning or end. So God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” God knew the horrific opposition Jeremiah would face. God says, “Be not crushed on their account.” He makes him like “a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass” against all the rejection he will get from Judah.

Luke 4:21-30. In saying, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus is saying that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to bring glad tidings to the poor, in other words, that he is the prophet being sent by God the Father. The people in the synagogue where he gave his short talk, “asked, ‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph?’” They were really saying we saw him grow up in our midst just as an ordinary, local person. How is it that all of a sudden, he claims to be a prophet? Secondly, the people complained that he has worked many wondrous miracles in Capernaum but not here in Nazareth. Jesus’ purpose in working miracles was to build faith in those who were open to believe. It made no sense to work miracles for those who had a closed mind and a hard heart as did those he had grown up with. In answer to them Jesus replies that God the Father worked miracles for the widow in Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian were not Jews. They were greatly angered by that reply because as God’s People they thought that they had an irrefutable claim and sole ownership of God’s good works. In pointing out that God had chosen other people to be generous to instead of the Jews, it challenged the assumption that, in being chosen by God, all other peoples were rejected by God with no right to God’s good works. Not only did they not know who Jesus was; they did not they were in God’s eyes.

1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:13. Earlier in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, Paul relates that the Holy Spirit gives varied spiritual gifts to the whole body of the church or Assembly of God’s People coordinating and providing for the various interrelated functions of the body so that the body can operate as a single efficient unit. The gifts vary in such a way that, working together harmoniously, the body can operate or function as an efficient whole or entity. Above the ordinary gifts that the Spirit gives, Paul makes it clear that there is a spiritual gift that is greater than all the rest that all of us should strive for. Paul goes on to say that he has grown in knowledge since his childhood. He is the point now, he writes, that he has grown to know only partially and indistinctly; but what he does know is that greatest of all gifts is love. Genesis 1:27 says: “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.” Since 1 John 4:16b says: “God is love”, and we are made in his image and likeness, then we must be love which is to say that we must, not only be loving, but that our very person must be love as God is love. In Matthew 6:9, Jesus teaches us to pray by calling God our Father. As sons and daughters to our Father God who is love we must be love because we are the offspring of the One who is love. Love is not just something we do but who we are. This is his glad tidings to the poor. God will make rich in God’s love.

3C19. Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10. The Law or the Torah was God’s way of making the Hebrews into his faithful Chosen People. The faithful practice of the Law was to unite them together as one people belonging to the one God. Ezra the priest was speaking to the people as God’s representative. He told that rejoicing in the Lord must be their strength. That must be our strength too.

Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21. Luke, the evangelist, writes to his readers as though writing to one person named Theophilus, which means in Greek “one who loves God’. “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.” As the human aspect of Jesus was given over to the power of the Spirit so should we be daily, following the example of Jesus. As Ezra read the Scriptures to the people, so does Jesus. Jesus reads from Isaiah 6:1-2 what Isaiah had written regarding the restoration of God’s people to their land but now applies this passage to his ministry to establish a new People of God as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Jesus says to those in the synagogue, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

1 Corinthians 12:12-30. “We were all given to drink of one Spirit,” since the many members of the church, using our many Spirit-given gifts for the benefit of the whole body of the church make us one body with Christ as the head, as did the Law make the Hebrews one in God. As Ezra proclaimed the Law of the Lord to unite the people as one people in God, so too Jesus proclaimed the fulfillment of the Old Testament in his Person and ministry to create a one, new people of God. It would seem that Paul wrote this section to address problems in the Corinthian community where there may not have been adequate respect for the spiritual gifts that others had received and /or some members were claiming that their gifts were superior to others thus creating dissension and disunity, thus offending the unity that God’s Church must have.

2C19. Isaiah 62:1-5. Isaiah looks forward to the return of the Hebrew captives to Israel. “So shall your God rejoice in you” as his people returns to his embrace as his bride. What great things God will do for his people because his love for them is so great!

John 2:1-11. When reading John’s gospel, it is absolutely necessary to realize that, more than than not, he intentionally writes with two levels of meaning. First there is the obvious first meaning or understanding that the text is speaking on a physical, everyday layer of meaning, i.e. the text says just what the common understanding is and nothing more or less. However, then John the Evangelist expects us to delve into the deeper, more profound meaning he really wants us to perceive. From the first reading we can see that God wants to see his relationship to his people as a marriage that involves the deep caring that the groom should have for his bride and not just as two people passing each other on the street. In the coming of Jesus into the world God is forming a new bride whom he wishes to marry in yet a deeper love than before. Returning to the first obvious level of meaning we should recognize that the disciples of Jesus were, what I refer to, as a lower blue-collar class of hard working people who were used to living a hard and hardy style of life. In other words, there is a good chance that the reason why the feast ran short of wine was that Jesus’ disciples drank most of it. Mary is confronting her son with the problem of the lack of wine because she feels he has the responsibility to deal with the shortage that his disciples have created. At first he is reluctant because he seems to feel that “My hour has not yet come” to work miracles. Yet Mary persists by saying to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” I feel that Jesus still remains obedient to his Mother and to God the Father who speaks through Mary. Jesus superabundantly provides for the wine that ran short by turning six stone jars filled with water into 120 to 180 gallons of wine, almost 900 bottles full. There is a deeper level of meaning to be uncovered in this stupendous miracle. I believe that Jesus works this miracle at the beginning of his ministry to say that, what was the water of the Old Covenant, he now turns into rich, fine wine, the infinite abundance of his redemptive love that is the New Covenant that Jesus initiates in his ministry. Jesus brings to the world a love that is akin to a deep love a bridegroom has for his bride to make something, new, deeper and better. The headwaiter remarks, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus thereby announces that he is taking what was good in the Old Testament times and making it infinitely better by his ministry. John does not relate the reaction of Jesus’ disciples to this miracle directly but indirectly when he writes rites, “Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.”

1 Corinthians 12:4-11. “There are different workings (spiritual gifts or service) but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.” “One and the same Spirit produces all of these (spiritual gifts), distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.” Through his ministry Jesus is building a new Holy People of God through the work of the Holy Spirit that includes all peoples and not just Jews. Psalm 96 says, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all you lands.” “Tell his glory among all the nations; among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.” Through Jesus’ ministry God’s power flowed then and now into all peoples to build his new Church, to create his new bride.

BaptC19. Isaiah 40:1-2, 9-11. God makes the way ready for his people to return from their captivity in Babylon. God is the glorious savior of his people who benefit from their God’s power. He is not only awesome but gentle, loving and caring. “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.”

Luke 3:15-16, 21-22. The people were captivated by the severe holiness of John, asking him if he might be the messiah. “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming.” Continuing on, he said, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” The Messiah who is to come will give the Holy Spirit to lead the people to repentance while those who do not repent will be burned and consumed by an ‘unquenchable fire.’ In Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels Jesus is baptized by John; but in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is baptized after John’s ministry has ended because John has already been imprisoned by Herod before Jesus was baptized (Luke 3:20-21). In Luke’s Gospel after John’s ministry ended, Jesus’ ministry began. After Jesus “had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.’” The presence of God, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father’s verbal affirmation testified that this person, Jesus who appeared to the people, only in earthly human form is truly the divine Son of God. At Jesus’ death when “the centurion and the men with him who keeping watch over Jesus experienced the earthquake” and all the calamitous events that were happening, “they said, ‘truly, this was the Son of God!’”(Matthew 27:54) Jesus was the divine son of God, spoken of in the baptismal formula: “in the name of the Father and of the Son, and the holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19); but at the same he was the human son of God and of Mary. (Luke 1:35) Jesus was and is both human and divine. In his divinity the Son of God had no beginning, since divinity cannot be created; in his humanity he did have a beginning, then an end in his death on the cross and then a new beginning in his resurrection with a glorified body. Adam is called son of God because he was created by God to be a human being in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26 & Luke 3:38b). However, Adam had no existence before God created him, as did the Son of God.

Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7. Grace in Hebrew is said to mean favor, i.e. that is one who is graced has found favor with God. When, as Jesus says, “you are in me and I in you (John 14:20b), Jesus shares himself with us, i.e. his life, his love, his knowledge, his power, so that we grow more and more in the image and likeness of God. As I understand it, grace is that sharing of his divine self with us. In John 15:4a, Jesus says, “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” In John 15:7, Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” “Because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior so that we might be justified by his grace.”

Psalm 104. “O Lord, my God, you are great indeed! You are clothed with majesty and glory.” The Lord has shown by the infinite goodness of his works how glorious he is! Without him there is nothing that is good. “When you send forth your spirit,” “you renew the face of the earth.”

Epiph19

“Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance. Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you: your sons come from afar.” All nations come to worship Yahweh, not just a select Chosen People, the Jews. All peoples are God’s peoples.

Matthew 2:1-12. The magi come following the star that leads to the “newborn king of the Jews.” The star is the light that leads to Jesus. It shines for all peoples. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has no overcome it” (John 1: 5). King Herod was the darkness who wanted to extinguish the light but was destined to fail because the source of the light (God) is infinitely more powerful than the source of darkness (the devil). See how diabolic Herod is when he sends the magi to seek Jesus and says, “When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” The darkness that is so deep seeks to devour the light that is the Christ. The non-Jews, the magi, “prostrated themselves and did him homage. They opened their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” The star was God’s way of inviting in the Gentiles to take Jesus as their Messiah. They followed the light sent by God to lead them to eternal life. The Holy Spirit does that for us daily. “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race” (John 1: 3c-4).

Hebrews 1:1-6. “The mystery was made known to me by revelation. It was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body.” The revelation is the light that takes away the darkness. Jesus is the revelation that he is the Messiah, Savior of all peoples. We who daily follow the light, the Holy Spirit, shall be people of eternal life. “Then you shall be radiant at what you see.” ( from the first reading)

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 72. “Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.” A society that honestly honors the place that God deserves because he is God worships him. God has created us out of an intense love for us because his divine nature is love. The very least we ought to do is to love him as the divine giver of love and recognize him as who he truly is, the infinite divinity. The way to let God be God in our lives is to worship him in our prayers daily. If we don’t do that, then he is no longer genuinely present to our hearts and minds. We end treating him as a non-existent entity in our lives. Practically speaking, by not giving God the place he deserves in our daily routine, we live as atheists. Let us worship him daily