January 31, 2010
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
The word of the LORD came to me thus: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you. Jeremiah 1:4-5
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Luke 4:24
Piety
What God says about Jeremiah is true of all of us. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” God has a purpose for all of us. He picked our families for us. He gave us all a destiny. He gave us an absolute freedom. He would never take back our freedom. We cannot deserve God’s love. Everything about life is God’s gift to us He picked the world where we would make our free choices. He does not force us to love him. He gives us his love which we are free to respond to. Our gift of life fills us with the attractions that make life possible. The energy of choices flows out of our pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth. I can make gods out of my desires and selfishness can rule my life. I can surrender my desires to what is the good of others; then selflessness replaces selfishness. Love is the giving up of what I have a right to for the good of others. Our piety is expressed in living our lives for others.
Study
We learn how to live our lives with the greatest spiritual gifts. All the great gifts of prophecy, understanding the great mysteries of life, even enough faith to move mountains, Paul tells us are nothing if I do not have love. We can make a lot of noise by what we know and how we show ourselves off, but we are nothing without love. I learn patience by how I suffer to make things easier for others. Love is patient. I learn how to be kind by rejoicing in the good of others. Love is not jealous. I learn to be humble by not being pompous because I know love is not inflated or rude or seeks its own interest. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. We have to grow up if we want to be lovers of the people of our lives. We must put aside the childish things of our life to live our lives as adult lovers of each other.
Action
The greatest of all the gifts is love. Christ returns to his native place and shares with his people what love is all about. When they think about his being the son of Joseph, as amazed as they were with his wisdom and knowledge, they reject him because they do not understand how it is possible for him to have changed so greatly. They seek to punish him because he is claiming for himself the role of prophet. They seek to cast him down from the brow of the hill on which their town was built, but Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away. We have to share the truth of ourselves not just with the strangers of our lives, but even with those who knew us when we were children. The challenge to grow up is lived out in the way we allow each other to grow in the love of the Lord. We must hear the call of the Lord to love the Lord, our God, with all our hearts. But we must also love our neighbor with all that we are. John puts the question to us. How can we say we love the God we do not see, if we do not love the neighbor that we do see. Our action has to be the glad tidings to the poor and the proclaiming of liberty to captives. Our love is played out in what we do for the least ones in our lives. The best action is picking out someone who needs us and reaching out beyond the limits of our pocketbooks to share what we have with the least one of our lives.
