1/8/2015 – Thursday after Epiphany – Luke 4:14-22

      It is hard being a prophet in your own land.  It is hard talking about matters of faith with family or friends or neighbors.  It is hard living out our vocation or calling if it defies the expectations that people have for us.  When Jesus came to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and read from the prophet Isaiah, I am sure a lot of people were shocked and amazed.  It was a radical message he read – of bringing glad tidings to the poor, of setting the oppressed free, of giving sight to the blind, of giving liberty to the captives.  Often we do the opposite of this message that Jesus and the prophets bring. We want the captives to remain behind bars.  We want revenge on those who brings us harm.  We blame the poor for their predicament and tell them to pull themselves out of their poverty.  We domesticate and water down the message we hear in the Gospels so many times.  Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was martyred for the faith while celebrating mass by the military forces of his own country, said this: “A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed -- what gospel is that?”  There are those who don’t want the priests or the leaders of our Church talking about the harsh reality of our society, of the social sins that we don’t want to see.  But look at what Jesus did in his day.  He was not afraid to speak out.  He was not afraid of the repercussions. And neither should we be afraid to speak the Good News of the Gospel in its fullest sense.  Our faith is not just about preaching about God’s heavenly kingdom and waiting for what is to be in the end times or in our eternal life with Christ. The Gospel is not just about a God who lives in the heavens - it is about proclaiming the Good News in the here and now. 

1/9/2014 – Thursday after Epiphany – 1 John 4:19- 5:4, Luke 4:14-22

      All this week, this last week of the Christmas season, we have been hearing readings from the first letter of John.   One of the main topics of this letter is love, which we’ve been hearing about all this week. Today, we are told that we cannot say that we love God if we do not love our brothers and sisters.  The letter does not say that we love our brothers and sisters when it is convenient or easy, just that we are to love our brothers and sisters. It also says that this love is not meant to be burdensome. We know that is not always so easy, that sometimes we need to grow into this love and forgiveness, to pray for it and meditate over it and to ask God’s grace to help us when it is difficult to do.  We also hear from the Gospel, as Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah that “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”  Perhaps this is the key to loving as God loves us, to rely on his Spirit to help us to love, to help us to grow in this love.  Like Jesus, we are to bring his Good News to all, to bring glad tidings to the poor and the oppressed.  And the Spirit will lead us in doing this.  It is something we cannot do on our own.