Today’s Gospel brings us to the beginning of Christ’s apostolic life and ministry. The Third Luminous Mystery is a meditation on this specific moment in the life of Christ. Before Christ’s parables, before Jesus begins to teach us more clearly about His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit – before He tells His disciples about His coming death and Resurrection – He calls to conversion. In a lot of ways He simply continues the message of John the Baptist, the main thing that changes is the urgency. While it was urgent for the Jews to convert when John the Baptist was preaching, preparing for the imminent arrival of the messiah, it becomes even more imperative when the true identity of Jesus is made known at His Baptism. Now it is no longer, “get ready because the messiah is almost here,” instead it is, “now the messiah is standing right in front of you: behold the Lamb of God.” Jesus says, “repent because the Kingdom of Heaven is now here, present in your midst.” Jesus Himself is the Kingdom of Heaven – those He calls to join Him and who attach themselves to Him enjoy already the peace that only God can give.
Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s first reading there is something I find a bit strange. God not only promises to do something by His words, He also swears to do it by His own person. Clearly God can do whatever He wants, and if He were to change His mind He would be free to do it. But we know that when God says something, He does it. Why would He swear to it? What does God Himself swearing to accomplish something add to the words of His promise? To make things even more complicated, Jesus commands us not to swear: “Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything else is from the evil one.” Would God lie? Would the one who has no one to answer to except Himself bother with untruths? The devil is the father of lies because He must answer to God and He refuses to.
Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
Time is something that we can measure, but have you stopped to think about how we measure it? We measure it by how things move: the earth is spinning, it is also moving around the Sun. If you have a mechanical clock you can see the gears moving or hear the ticking sound of the gears as they move. Even digital clocks are based on movement: the cycles of particles moving through a circuit. Time is really just a measure of movement from someone’s point of view: imagine if you were a Martian your day would be different because a full rotation takes slightly longer – 37 minutes longer – than an earth rotation. Instead of asking you how old you are, I could ask you how much you have moved since you were born – apparently we move about 19,200 miles every day. We do that with cars, it’s almost more important how much they have moved than when they were made.