Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Link to Mass Readings: http://www.usccb.org/nab/012311.shtml

Today’s readings are about longing for God, and the suddenness with which He can come.

Longing is something common to everyone. We long for the girl who doesn’t see us, or the job we don’t have. We long for a friend when we are lonely, and for God when we can’t make sense of the suffering. Today the psalmist asks, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?” But he ends with “I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord/ in the land of the living./ Wait for the Lord with courage;/ be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.” He isn’t certain of God, but longs for His certainty and refuge. The psalmist persists in his belief, waiting fervently for the God he cannot feel but believes will come for him. He longs with faith.

In the first reading, longing is fulfilled. Not only has God brought light, and abundant joy, but he has smashed the rod of the taskmaster. Smash is a strong word; God did not remove the rod, He did not break it, but He smashed it with all the force of a man throwing a glass bulb onto the ground. The point is that when God comes, He comes.

Jesus came to Galilee, and invites Simon and Andrew to come with him and be “fishers of men.” They come at once, leaving their nets. Jesus next sees James and John, and when He called to them, they came immediately. These four men then travelled with Jesus as He taught in the synagogues, proclaimed the gospel, and cured every disease and illness among the people.

We get so caught up in our lives, and what we long for, that we can imagine nothing will ever change. We make up a thousand obstacles between us and what we want, and a thousand excuses why we can’t do something. We in the Church may long for holiness, and to be chaste, or forgiving, but we know that this and that and such and such will never let us do it. But God smashed the rod, and Jesus was followed at once and immediately. There is nothing keeping us from lives of holiness, when God is so powerful.

And it is God, only God who will bring us there. The second reading deals with the division among early Christians, where some said they belong to Paul, or others Apollo. But Paul says you fools, it is not me, or Apollo, or Cephas that saved you in your longing but Christ. It was the cross of Christ, and the death He suffered that set all men free, with no divisions. God is more powerful than Paul, than the Pope, or any church, and it is in Him that we find rest from our longing. Sometimes we forget that.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” The light is not Catholicism, or Lutherism, or non-denominationalism (which divides itself as well), but Christ. Always and only Christ.

Christ is more powerful than anything in our lives. When we long for Him, we should remember the words smash, at once, and immediately. There is nothing keeping us from Him that He cannot overcome. We just have to say yes to the invitation.