Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 21, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
January 21, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation the Lord wants to have with us this Sunday, when the Church will mark for the fourth time the Sunday of the Word of God, which Pope Francis decreed in 2019 would take place on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. He established it, he said, to help believers, to assist you and me, to grow in our knowledge of Sacred Scripture, to mine its inexhaustible riches and help us better to proclaim that treasure to the world. Scripture, he added, is a “constant dialogue between the Lord and his people.” When approached in a spirit of prayer, it allows us to enter into the most consequential conversation of all. That’s why when Conversations with Consequences was begun back in 2019, the Catholic Association asked me to contribute a reflection each week on the Gospel for the upcoming Sunday, so that we might better respond to the invitation Christ gives us eek to enter into a prayerful discussion that overflows into a dialogue of life. As we mark this weekend the Sunday of the Word of God, we give thanks to the Lord for entering into colloquy with us and ask his help so that we might be able to bring many others into that life-changing, heart-to-heart exchange.
• Let’s turn to the consequential conversation the Lord wants to have with us in our parishes this Sunday. Matthew tells us that Jesus left his native Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee, in the territory of Zebulun and Napthali. The reason he did so was not just that his fellow Nazarenes had tried to kill him by tossing him off the cliff on which Nazareth had been built, but to fulfill a prophecy, the prophecy that Isaiah announced 700 years before in Sunday’s first reading: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” By that point in history, Zebulun and Napthali, two regions named after two of the 12 sons of Jacob, had been annihilated by the invading Assyrians. Those who survived were still in the darkness not only of collective trauma but of subjugation. Isaiah’s words were those of hope, that when the Messiah would come, he would bring great light to illumine their existential gloom, that he would bring redemption to their slavery and abjection. In the Gospel, we see the fulfillment of that prophecy. Jesus, the Light of the World, the long-awaited Messiah, came to them in order — by his teaching, by his miracles, by his presence, and eventually by his passion, death and resurrection — to lead them on an exodus from darkness into great light. He was going to help them see the light, live in the light, and walk as children of the light. That’s why, as St. Matthew recounts for us, Jesus’ first words were “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is another way of saying, “Leave the Darkness. Come, believe in, and live in, the Light!”

• Then Jesus made that pilgrimage from darkness into light even more specific. He saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, fishing. He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Even though St. Peter’s first words to the Lord, recounted in St. Luke’s version of this encounter, were “Depart from me, O Lord, because I am a sinful man,” even though he was a man living in darkness, Christ called him. And he left the darkness behind, as well as his boats, the biggest catch of fish in his life, and everything else immediately to follow Christ into the light. As did his brother Andrew. As did James and John moments later. Such was the power of Christ, of his personality, of the way he radiated the luminous presence of God, that ordinary, hard-working men would leave everything on an instant to follow him.
• But that was just the beginning for the apostles. We see in this Sunday’s Gospel that they accompanied the Lord as he went throughout Galilee, passing on the light of his teaching and curing every disease and sickness, showing others that just as he had taken his first disciples from the darkness of ignorance, suffering and pain into the light of knowledge and health, so he wanted to take their souls from the darkness of sin and doubt, the gloom of depression, the pall of grief, into the radiance of a life changing relationship of love with him. The call that was so personal for Peter, Andrew, James, John and later for Matthew the tax collector turned evangelist is meant to be just as personal for us. The Lord calls each of us by name, he points to you and to me with his dazzling divine digit, and he summons us to follow him into the light so that we, in turn, can become his light illumining the paths of others to him — and through, with and in Him, to his body the Church, and ultimately to the radiant house of the eternal Father.
• It’s important, as we listen each Sunday to the Word of God, that we grasp that the conversation is not meant to be just informative, but transformative. The Lord wants it to be truly consequential, to fill us with his light of his truth and the incandescent flame of his love, and to send us out to illumine and inflame others. As we listen to the Gospel this Sunday, it’s crucial to recognize the personal call that Christ makes to each of us to repent and leave any and all darkness behind, and to believe by following him into the light and by living and walking always illumined by him. It’s not enough for us as Christians just to turn the lights on for an hour on Sunday mornings or for a few minutes before we go to bed and to live the rest of our life as if the shades are constantly down. Jesus calls us personally to walk and live with him in the light and he wants us maturely and responsibly to follow him on that pilgrimage out of the cave.
• Jesus’ and his Church’s mission to bring great light to a people sitting in darkness and dwelling in a land overshadowed by death is particularly relevant as we prepare on Sunday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the dreadful, indeed diabolical, Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States and led to the industrial slaughter of over 65 million children made in Jesus’ image and likeness. There’s no greater darkness than a culture that seeks to snuff out the light of life and love at its very beginning. We give thanks to God that last year, after 49 years of constant prayer, penance, witness, political and cultural engagement and legal argumentation, the Supreme Court saw the light and overturned the pitch blackness of Roe. But we know that the Dobbs decision was just a beginning, not an end. There’s still much work to do to create the conditions so that abortion would become unthinkable, so that pregnant women will be supported in every circumstance to bring their babies literally into the light, and to have confidence that they will have what they need to grow in that light. There’s still so much work to change habits, attitudes and practices that put women in vulnerable circumstances. There’s still so much work to do in states that permit abortion or even celebrate its darkness as if abortion is somehow light itself. So as we mark the fiftieth anniversary of Roe with the sadness at how much evil it unleashed, and gratitude that it is no longer the law of the land, we ask God for his grace so that the light that Jesus brought into the world — the light that shines in the darkness, the light that God is with us always until the end of time, the light that reminds us that whoever receives a little child in God’s name receives him and that whatever we do to the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, we do to him — will radiate in all its splendor through the Church and through each of us as Christian believers, so that every child will be loved, wanted, protected and assisted with the love that God has for each of us.
• As we prepare for Sunday of the Word of God, as Jesus calls us to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, as he calls us to himself just as he called his first apostles, as he leads us out as he teaches in our churches, proclaims the Gospel of his kingdom, and cures diseases and illnesses, let us ask him for the grace to respond as immediately, wholeheartedly, heroically and perseveringly as Peter, Andrew, James, John and Matthew. Let us ask him, too, to send the Holy Spirit to us so that as we recommit to bring the gift of his light to all those persons and areas living in darkness, especially to those dwelling in the valley of the culture of death, we may be effective instruments to lead them, with us, into God’s kingdom of light and love, and ultimately up the mountain of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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