Weekly Bulletin - February
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- 03 -Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
- 10 - First Sunday of Lent
- 17 - Second Sunday of Lent
- 24 - Third Sunday of Lent
Zephaniah is one of the least-known of the Old Testament prophets. He speaks in today’s first reading of impending judgment. But the Lord will leave a “remnant” in Israel. This image of a remnant, or remainder, was to become vital to both Judaism and Christianity. Paul’s letter to Corinth makes obvious his deep concern for the Christians there. They are too self-confident, he says, too sure of themselves. He admonishes them to remember that Christ has given them all they have. Today’s Gospel comprises the opening of Jesus’ “Great Sermon.” As God gave Moses the law on Sinai, so now Jesus gathers his disciples on a hillside to teach them the new law. Each of these Beatitudes contrasts the humiliation of the present with the glory of the future: poverty vs. the riches of God’s kingdom, hunger for holiness vs. fulfillment in the Spirit, persecution vs. the reign of God. Jesus is here speaking to God’s chosen “remnant.” © Copyright, J. S. Paluch Co.
In the movie Oh God, You Devil the roles of both God and Satan were played by George Burns. This completely baffled the humans. But as “God” pointed out, the face of evil has long tried to look like God, act like God, sound like God—or at least fulfill all our expectations of what God is like and desires. This is the aspect of Jesus’ human nature that Satan attempts to prey upon in today’s Gospel. It is in our human nature to seek the easy or surface answers; it was this part of Jesus’ true human nature that was tested in the desert dryness that immediately followed his plunge into the Jordan’s baptismal waters. Our surface expectations of God are in miracle-working, power and glory, the intervention of supernatural beings on our behalf. But all of these things can be accomplished by the might of evil as well. Jesus takes us deeper and shows us that, even when we’re at our weakest (as he would have been in the desert after his forty-day ordeal), we need to be relentless in seeking the true presence of God’s word, giving our worship to God alone, testing ourselves and not God. © Copyright, J. S. Paluch Co.
“We used to be such good friends. How is it that you’ve moved so far away?” one man asked another. “Perhaps,” the other replied, “you have moved away. By standing still.” This exchange very well could have happened between Peter and Jesus, had Peter been allowed to erect tents to stay on the mount of the Transfiguration. He nearly succumbed to the temptation to stay in a place of wonder and light. But Jesus knew the hard truth: we are on a continual journey when we are walking the paths of God’s will. It is not good for us to stay in one place on our faith journey. Equally unhealthy is staying put in times of joy and wonder to avoid life’s difficulties, or to wallow in our trials and temptations and fail to be companions for our sisters and brothers who are also suffering—or celebrating! The pilgrim Church is required to do one thing on its Lenten journey: to walk continually with Christ as his Body born of water and the Spirit, seeking God’s will, helping the reign of God to be known on earth, being led to the end of our journey, transfigured for all time into the company of heaven.© Copyright, J. S. Paluch Co.
Especially during the Lenten, Holy Week, and Easter seasons, the prayer texts of the Eastern Church revel in paradoxical images of Christ: the eternal life who is put to death, the host of the supper who is also its meal, the thirsty crucified one with living water streaming from his side. These images flow from the evangelists’ portrayals of Jesus and from his very ministry, during which he often upset or reversed people’s expectations about him or the ways of God. This “reversal” is at play in today’s Gospel, as Jesus speaks to an enemy foreigner who is also a woman beneath his status. In addition he, the thirsting one, shows the woman to be the one truly thirsting. He—whose parched lips will say “I thirst” before he dies—is the source of life and life-giving water. Lent calls upon us to dwell on how each of us is thirsting for Christ, and it leads us, ultimately, back to the life-giving waters of our baptism into his Body.© Copyright, J. S. Paluch Co.
