Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
January 31, 2016 11:00 am · Sergio Muñoz Fita
The 3 readings from this Sunday each deserve to be considered separately. All three of them are beautiful and profound. The first reading and the Gospel offer us two common elements: both Jeremiah, the prophet, and Jesus are aware of having received a mission, namely, to be witnesses of God in the world. They both must announce, proclaim the salvation of God.
However, in both cases, we are reminded that there will be opposition and resistance. In the first reading, God has told the prophet:
They will fight against you but not prevail over you?.
In the Gospel, Jesus is taken to the top of a hill, in his own town of Nazareth, to be killed.
The temptation of the apostle is always to weaken the evangelic message. Saints, on the other hand, are those who know how to live the message in such a radical way that they evoke hatred in everyone else, including those within the church who are not willing to change their way of life.
It may be called different things, but usually we hear the words “Cross Scandal”. Allow me to express it radically, as did the Lord that morning in the synagogue of Nazareth: Christianity is not only the cross, but it is essentially the cross. Nowadays, too many people want to render Christianity inoffensive; in doing so, they succeed only in falsifying it.
That happens very often when the Christian message is defended in the public square. We don’t want to scare or alienate anyone and so, in the process, the message loses its beneficial rough edges and ability to offend. But the heart of the Christian message as we see it in today’s Gospel is this: Christianity is a scandal and foolishness to the world.
Christ demands that father and mother, brothers and sisters, husband and wife, children, the entire world, even our own lives - all of these are to be considered as nothing in comparison with the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Not only that: meekness and servitude and endurance of injustice are required, power and dominion over others are forbidden. Poverty is praised. Riches are practically a threat of eternal damnation.
We have to lose our lives, not try to preserve them. We are not allowed to hate our enemy, we must even love him as we do ourselves.
I think this is to a great extent our mission in today’s world, in today’s Church. Just as Jeremiah and Jesus, we must teach people to see once more the heart of the Christian message in all its foolishness and in all its scandal. We must teach it as something worthy of love and as something capable of unleashing our greatest energies.
But this does not mean that it is cheap. Life breaks through only when it risks itself. Life is renewed when it sacrifices itself.
That’s why we need the power of love. Without love, as it’s described by Saint Paul in today’s second reading, we’ll end up throwing in the towel. In the past it was said that omnia vincit amor, love conquers everything. Today’s second reading may sound romantic, but the word Saint Paul uses for love is not the kind of love based on what we can get out of a relationship. It is not the love between a man and a woman. Saint Paul speaks about the very love of God, which is sacrificial. It’s a giving kind of love, the kind of love Jesus has for us. That love bears all things, endures all things, believes all things.
It makes us stronger, it makes us eternal. Let us search for him in prayer, in our relationship and friendship with Christ and we will find true joy. In this Holy Mass, where Jesus comes to us in the greatest Sacrament of Love, let us ask him to bring us closer to Him, and that in Him, we may be able to love everyone without limit, so that we can be faithful to the mission that He Himself has trusted to us.