Thursday

1st Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel we are reminded that sometimes the mission of spreading the Good News takes unexpected turns or hits snags. Word of of Our Lord’s miraculous healing abilities starts to spread despite his efforts, and now even when he goes off to a deserted place, people come looking. Our Lord has come to heal the sick and infirm, so why is he avoiding the crowds? In assuming human nature Our Lord works miracles, but also carries out his mission in a human way. If there’s a danger of being swamped, it has to be addressed, because it will hinder his mission, not help it.

The leper healed today was ecstatic over being healed, but did not work with Our Lord, and, inadvertently, worked against him. We forget sometimes that the Lord doesn’t just work flashy miraculous things in our lives: he gives us our existence, our daily bread, help against the evil in the world, and the truth that will set us free. Like the Israelites in today’s First Reading, many of the people seeking Our Lord in the desert wanted nothing other than a quick fix to an immediate problem, avoiding any other obligations or attachments. Just like the Israelites in today’s First Reading treated the ark of God (a.k.a. the ark of the covenant) as an automatic Win-the-Battle card, Our Lord knows those people in today’s Gospel have a deeper need that they are not addressing: the need for friendship and communion with God to be truly healed and whole.  The Israelites took God for granted one time too many, and Our Lord let them be defeated and lose the very sign of his presence among them to the Philistines to show them they had not been acting uprightly toward him. Our Lord heals those people who come to him, but he also knows that for many it will only be a band aid for something deeper to be addressed and changed in their lives, something he has come to address and to fix definitively.

We shouldn’t be discouraged when our own efforts to continue Our Lord’s mission hit snags or take unexpected turns. With Our Lord’s help, let’s be attentive to what others need in order to be cured–communion with God, not just getting caught up in addressing specific symptoms–a handout, a kind word, a helping hand. Let’s not neglect symptoms, but also focus on cures, spurred by compassion and aided by grace in imitation of Our Lord.

Readings: 1 Samuel 4:1–11; Psalm 44:10–11, 14–15, 24–25; Mark 1:40–45. See also Friday after Epiphany and 12th Week in Ordinary Time, Friday.

Thursday after Epiphany

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that history has changed with his Incarnation and birth. The things hoped for and prophesied were starting to come true. Today Jesus is addressing the people of his home town. We can overlook how incredible it is that God has a home town at all outside of Heaven. However, he doesn’t try profiting from the home advantage: when he comments on the passage from Isaiah he’d just read, he tells them God’s promises are coming true, and that’s why he’s there: to usher in a new relationship and union with God and an end to evil.

The list of wonders he recalls today don’t just stand on their own. It is Christ who brings us joy, whether we’re spiritually or materially poor. It is Christ who frees us from the evils in which we incarcerate ourselves through our sins. It is Christ who helps us to see when things are dark and uncertain. Lastly, it is he who frees us from the dominion of evil. He doesn’t just do the miracle and go home; he remains a part of our lives and, therefore, nothing can remain the same.

The Christmas season is still with us for a few days. Ask Our Lord to help you to see, to fill you with joy, and to free you from whatever separates you from him. Make this a year acceptable to the Lord.

Readings: 1 John 4:19–5:4; Psalm 72:1–2, 14, 15bc, 17; Luke 4:14–22. See also 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B and 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Monday.

2nd Week of Advent, Thursday

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To understand the momentous revelation Our Lord makes today for his listeners we have to imagine what it was like to hear prophet after prophet promise, generation after generation, century after century that the Messiah was coming, only to have to keep waiting. Today Our Lord tells them, and us, that the wait is all but over: John the Baptist is the last prophet, the prophet who would come as a new Elijah right before the arrival of the Messiah. A promise made through the prophets for centuries is about to be fulfilled in Jesus.

In Advent we celebrate that long wait drawing to an end, but also that events are about to take a dramatic turn for the better. When Our Lord describes John as least in the Kingdom of heaven, he is telling us that if we considered John blessed to be a prophet with a special mission and relationship with God, we would be even more blessed if we believed in Our Lord and formed a part of his Kingdom, a Kingdom he’ll inaugurate with his incarnation and birth.

Advent is a time to help us grow in joyful expectation and hope. Let’s ask Our Lord for a great faith that his promises will be fulfilled in our lives if we believe in him. Let’s ask for his blessings as we prepare for Christmas.

Readings: Isaiah 41:13–20; Psalm 145:1, 9–13ab; Matthew 11:11–15.

1st Week of Advent, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord invites us to use the season of Advent to go beyond the routine tinsel, glitter, and blinking lights and welcome him into our hearts as the foundation on which we can build a holier life. It’s easy to fall into a routine of “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings,” but all the decorations and celebrations are to welcome someone special into our life, or acknowledge what a special role he has already had; even “Merry Christmas” can focus more on the merriment and not on whose birth we’re welcoming and celebrating.

When Our Lord invites us today to go beyond lip service and seek to do the Father’s will, his incarnation and birth are an example of precisely that. He chose to become flesh and dwell among us, because he loved us and he loved Our Father. His life is built on that from here to eternity.

Advent is a time of conversion, and conversion can also mean living a more solid life. Let’s continue to live Advent as a preparation for founding or re-founding our life on Our Lord on Christmas Day and beyond.

Readings: Isaiah 26:1–6; Psalm 118:1, 8–9, 19–21, 25–27a; Matthew 7:21, 24–27. See also 12th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday.

34th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel we catch a glimpse of an evangelist who was not an eye witness to everything Our Lord said. Luke’s account of Our Lord’s prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple takes into account not only what Our Lord taught, but how the first generation of Christians understood it when it happened. They could have easily fallen into doubt about what Jerusalem’s impending destruction at the hands of the Romans meant, which is why Our Lord told them to flee, knowing that while that moment was the end of “a” world, it not the end of “the” world.

Our Lord interweaves his predictions regarding the Temple with teaching on his Second Coming, the return of the Son of Man in power. As we’ve already seen this week, cultural, social, and even cosmic upheavals will take place, and they’ll be terrifying, but they won’t immediately be the end. Today Our Lord describes his return using the imagery of the Book of Daniel, a language every Jew of his time would understand. As he reminds us, when he returns in glory, a Christian has no need to cringe or to cower, because redemption is at hand: deliverance from pain, suffering, evil and fear. As Christians we know his mercy endures forever. The only people who need to be afraid of Our Lord’s return are those who reject his message or his mercy, and we pray for them always to welcome the Gospel and to welcome true and lasting happiness.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us identify those moments of upheaval in our lives and to discern whether it is a moment to stand tall, seeing God’s hand at work to deliver us, of retreat, knowing some evil is beyond our ability to address, or of defeat, asking Our Lord for his intervention and his mercy.

Readings: Daniel 6:12–28; Daniel 3:68–74; Luke 21:20–28.