Calling Out Hypocrisy

Remember from last week, the key to loving your enemy is in action, not emotion: showing kindness: in thought, in word and in action. So, if someone curses us, we are to bless them.

“A blessing is not just to do good towards somebody, but to speak good to somebody. So you bless with your mouth, you act (obviously) with your actions through all kinds of different ways. If someone curses me, they speak evil against me. You’re verbalizing that they would wish harm upon you (that’s what a curse is).

“To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

We all have enemies and that is a sad thing, Who is your greatest enemy? Who hates you? We all have enemies. Yes, it’s a sad thing, but unfortunately it’s true for most of us, if not for all of us. How do we react to this situation?

We Are Blessed Sacrament: It’s a different world in today’s Gospel. Jesus turns all our notions of what is good and desired and makes it upside down in St. Luke’s version of The Sermon on the Mount. Now that his twelve apostles have been selected, Jesus teaches and prepares them for their mission. “Get used to ‘different’ from now on.”

“They beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them” (Lk 5:7).

First we see that Jesus is preaching to a crowd who is pressing in on Him to listen. What an amazing, inspiring image! Do we “press in” as we listen to the readings proclaimed in Mass with this same sense of wonder and urgency?

Today, 40 days after Christmas, we celebrate the great Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, when Mary and Joseph brought their infant Son to the Temple in obedience to the laws of their Jewish faith. This is a beautiful and mysterious feast, with many lessons for us. This Gospel passage from St. Luke, recounting the details of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, teaches us a stewardship lesson through the example of St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother, who are the “Holy Parents.” “Mary and Joseph consecrate Jesus to the Father out of love and obedience. Our parents did the same with and for us at our baptism.

“Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, ‘Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.’”

What does this teach us as Christian stewards? It shows us that we all have equal dignity and worth in God’s sight, and that if God sees us as equally precious, we should view each other in this same light. It teaches us to humbly recognize our own gifts as well as the giftedness of every member of our parish family. And, while God designed us to be ultimately dependent on Him, it seems He has also designed us to need each other!

“Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now” (John 2:10).

After the Baptism of The Lord, we return to Ordinary Time. Each year, the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time is from the Gospel of John. This year, we have the account of the famous story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, the time when Jesus officially began His ministry by performing His first miracle at Mary’s request.

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

How do you describe the indescribable? It was the greatest day of Our Lord’s life. Up to that point, at least. We celebrated the Epiphany of The Lord last week with the Christmas Star over Bethlehem and the visit of the Magi and now we close out the Season of Christmas and we move to the River Jordan.

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way” (Gospel of St. Matthew 2:12).

Good Stewardship is an Act of Worship:
How do we announce the birth of a child today? “Send pictures! Send photos!” is the first thing we say when a baby is born and we send and receive photos or videos to each other on our cell phones and tablets. Usually the first pictures are taken shortly after the birth, still in the hospital. Then, after a while, there’s the more formal portrait photos with parents and siblings and grandparents. Yet we want to see the first photo above all.

In the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus was about “my Father’s business” yet he humbly and obediently went back home with them to their family home in Nazareth.

“They worshiped as a family and with their faith community. And they did so faithfully. We can take their example to heart by making Sunday Mass attendance a priority for our families, by making prayer with our family a priority every day, by making sure that we regularly celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, and by observing in our family life the great feasts. When we, as families, prioritize our Time with God and worship of Him we will be imitating the Holy Family” (catholicsteward.com/holyfamily).

O COME, O COME Emmanuel: We are on our final week of the Journey to Bethlehem. We are in the village of Ein Karem, 5 miles to the west of Jerusalem, the home town of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

When Mary said to the Angel Gabriel at her home in Nazareth “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord! May it be done to me according to your word,” she became the Mother of God, and she immediately dropped everything and went to Ein Karem to visit Elizabeth, who was also expecting. Mary, our Mother, brings Jesus to us.

This is the Third Sunday of Advent, and is also known as GAUDETE Sunday. Rose is the Color of this weekend. Rose and purple are also the colors of our sunrises and sunsets in these shortest days. We are past the half-way point of Advent. We REJOICE in The Lord Jesus! For Jesus IS Coming Soon “Exhorting them in many other ways, John preached good news to the people.” We are over half-way to Bethlehem.

We continue our yearly Advent Pilgrimage to Bethlehem today.

On our journey of hope, we meet John the Baptist and he tells us how to really celebrate to the fullest this first “coming” on the feast of Christmas and how to prepare for the second coming: through sincere repentance.

A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.