Christmas Weekday

Today's Mass Readings

While most of our country has left Christmas behind, in the daily Mass readings and Catholic liturgical year, we continue to ponder the meaning of God’s coming among us. Today’s gospel passage from Luke provides us with a particularly vivid portrayal of what it means to have God – incarnated in the person of Jesus – among us. Luke describes Jesus as having gained some fame and a following; in particular Luke mentions Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue, which indicates Jesus’ knowledge of and commitment to the Jewish faith to which he belonged. In today’s dramatic selection, Jesus reads from the Isaiah scroll. It is a passage that seems to reflect the words of a Messiah: one who has come for the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed to bring glad tidings and liberty and to “proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Lk. 4:19). When he has finished reading this passage, Jesus announces that the passage is now fulfilled. In other words, Jesus has proclaimed his own identity. He tells us why God is among us, and this proclamation is one of salvation. While Jesus’ own time on earth focused especially on the poor, captives, the blind, and the oppressed, we are ALL in some sense poor, subject to captivity, blind, and oppressed. We are all in need of this God among us, and we only truly know joy, sight and true freedom when we understand Jesus as our salvation.

The story of the people of Israel is one of varying times of captivity, poverty, and oppression. So too we continue to struggle with sin and evil in our world. Just as the people of Israel longed for a Messiah to redeem them, we long for our salvation. And yet, we have found this salvation in the person of Jesus who fulfills the Isaiah prophecy. We now know, as the first reading from 1 John tells us, that God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). It is for this reason that he came to live among us—born as a babe in Bethlehem.

What flows from this profound love of God is our own love of God and of others. God first loved us, and this empowers us to return this love and share it in the world. While the practicalities of loving others at times seem challenging, it is possible to love others precisely because the ability to love comes not simply from ourselves, but radiates from God himself. This is a God who loves us so much that he chooses to live as one of us, and to die as one of us, promising us eternal life by his own resurrection.

This love is the power of Christmas. God’s first loving us makes our own Christian lives possible. Today, let us take some time to bask in this love of God, to feel ourselves loved. Then let us pray that we might better be able to share this love of God with the world.

- Maria Morrow