Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 65
Reading I
1 Sm 3:3b-10, 19
Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the LORD
where the ark of God was.
The LORD called to Samuel, who answered, “Here I am.”
Samuel ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. You called me.”
“I did not call you, “ Eli said. “Go back to sleep.”
So he went back to sleep.
Again the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli.
“Here I am, “ he said. “You called me.”
But Eli answered, “I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep.”
At that time Samuel was not familiar with the LORD,
because the LORD had not revealed anything to him as yet.
The LORD called Samuel again, for the third time.
Getting up and going to Eli, he said, “Here I am. You called me.”
Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth.
So he said to Samuel, “Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply,
Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.”
When Samuel went to sleep in his place,
the LORD came and revealed his presence,
calling out as before, “Samuel, Samuel!”
Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him,
not permitting any word of his to be without effect.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 40:2, 4, 7-8, 8-9, 10
R. (8a and 9a) Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
I have waited, waited for the LORD,
and he stooped toward me and heard my cry.
And he put a new song into my mouth,
a hymn to our God.
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
Sacrifice or offering you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Holocausts or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, “Behold I come.”
R. Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
“In the written scroll it is prescribed for me,
to do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!”
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
Reading II
1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20
Brothers and sisters:
The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord,
and the Lord is for the body;
God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.
Avoid immorality.
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body,
but the immoral person sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
For you have been purchased at a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body.
Alleluia
Jn 1:41, 17b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
We have found the Messiah:
Jesus Christ, who brings us truth and grace.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 1:35-42
John was standing with two of his disciples,
and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said,
“Behold, the Lamb of God.”
The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.
Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them,
“What are you looking for?”
They said to him, “Rabbi” — which translated means Teacher —,
“where are you staying?”
He said to them, “Come, and you will see.”
So they went and saw where Jesus was staying,
and they stayed with him that day.
It was about four in the afternoon.
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter,
was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus.
He first found his own brother Simon and told him,
“We have found the Messiah” — which is translated Christ —.
Then he brought him to Jesus.
Jesus looked at him and said,
“You are Simon the son of John;
you will be called Cephas” — which is translated Peter.
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
God is constantly calling to us to love and serve Him. This call is most commonly through thepresence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We can feel Him when we are silent and are able to push out all of the distractions that we face daily in a world filled with temptations and stimulations of the flesh. Paul describes this in his Letter to the Romans where he explains how the spirit and the flesh are incompatible; constantly in conflict with each other. There will betimes when the call is stronger and may include visitations or methods which include one or more of our physical senses. Regardless of what method God decides to use it is up to us to understand that He never ceases calling us to love Him and to serve Him out of that love. We aretruly privileged to be in a position where our Creator loves us so much that He would never abandon us; instead choosing to be with us always. Realizing His presence in our lives is the in establishing a relationship with Him. This understanding can then always be used tostrengthen this relationship.
Samuel was in service to God but did not know Him on a personal level. He was immature in hisfaith and in his relationship with Him. At night he slept by the Ark of the Covenant and yet,being in proximity to something as holy as it, he was still unable to bring his relationship down to a closer and more personal level. This can serve as a reminder to us that approaching God must begin on an intimate level in order to remove the barriers between us and Him. Thesebarriers were not created by God but more from our ignorance and the presence of sin. Being sons of God has often led us to act like God while ignoring the presence of the One True God.This is most obvious in the actions of Eli the priest and his two sons who were also in service to God. Eli was a witness to the miracle of Samuel’s mother giving birth to him even though she was barren. He and his sons were also charged with the protection of the Ark of the Covenant and to the direction of worship in the temple. All of this did not prevent Eli’s sons from being corrupted by their positions: having sex with women as they came to worship, stealing sacrificialmeat, and other blasphemous behavior. Eli erred by not correcting his sons and permitting the behavior to continue. Reflecting on our past and possibly present behaviors I feel that we all can relate to some time in our lives where we acted the same way. No one is without sin and the consequences include a feeling that God is absent from our lives.
It is through prayer and worship that we can avoid the pitfalls of sin and bad behavior which leads us away from God. This is the starting point. Assigning it importance in our lives and committing to it is the next step. Just like in other things, when we understand how important something is, we tend to give it more attention. If we do not make our relationship with God important then we cannot become benefactors of a relationship with Him; other things will ultimately get in the way. The Apostle Paul reminds us in his letter today that, “ whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.” We can become merged with Jesus Christ and our live can be intertwined with Him. This is the most powerful bond that can be formed in the world: a bond with our God. Upon realizing this and understanding exactly what this means in our life should motivate us to pursue this relationship all the more devoutly. By the clearing of the path from all debris between us and Jesus will mean that we will be able to experience profound transformation within ourselves that will bring us closer to perfection. This perfection is in the spiritual sense that will draw us into a new life and a new-found purpose which will then begin a process of healing; relieving us from the burdens of imperfection that plague us. Christ is the remedy to all of that which ails us.
Proper moral conduct and a rich prayer life, grounded in worship, cannot have a negative effect. Nothing that comes from God or includes God can produce something bad. We are warned to avoid immorality because anything that is immoral threatens the placing of God first in our lives. It produces an absence of God and welcomes in the opposite of God which is pure evil. Just because something feels good in the short term doesn’t necessarily mean it is healthy for us. Take for instance a dog’s reaction to a roasted whole chicken. It smells good. It tastes good. The dog salivates and all of its instincts urge the animal to leap forward; eating the entire thing as quickly as possible. What then happens? The bones cannot be digested and the dog will most likely die. We are the dog and the chicken is sin. Eventually, consumed by our immorality, we too will die as a result.
In the Gospel Reading today Andrew and John began following Jesus as he walked. Jesus stopped, turned around, and asked them a powerful question: “What are you looking for?” It is a potent question that Jesus is asking all of us when we try to follow Him: “What are you looking for?” It is good to remind ourselves of that question as we strive to get closer to God. The answer might be different depending on where we find ourselves spiritually but in the end it defines our relationship with Jesus. It can serve as a challenge and ultimately a motivator for us to pursue God and keep following Him. When we follow Him Jesus will react to our presence just as we have reacted to His. We will then find ourselves walking with Him instead of Him leading us. It then becomes a mutual journey and one that finds Him becoming our intimate companion. What better companion can we have then Our God?
Deacon Tom
Everybody can probably remember a time when we called to God for help and received no response. Instead there was a deep sense of loneliness coupled with emptiness. But it is within this silence where God is actually trying to talk to us. He is already there waiting for us to listen to him. Even though we feel that we are reaching out to him in desperation he has been calling us the whole time.
We are positioned perfectly within the universe and God is present everywhere. It is impossible to avoid him and not experience him in some way or another. The challenge is how we receive him. There is so many distractions in every day life that God's Word can easily become muted in some way or distorted to a point where our own thoughts and perceptions take the place of his. Instead of receiving his answer or enjoying his presence we are subject to our own distorted view of what we are looking for. We are then finding ourselves justifying our own solutions thinking they are God's divine word. This is where we are most vulnerable to misinterpretation. Our calamities become worse and our situation more dire than it was before.
Our relationship with God must be approached just like any other relationship in our lives. It takes a great amount of work to truly experience the fruits of what is being offered to us. The silence we abhor is really the place where we have to begin searching for what God is telling us. He does not often reveal himself in a grandiose manner but instead choose to envelop us in the gift of his presence and a state of being that transforms us spiritually so that we may fully align ourselves with him. Our physical and mental being will follow our spiritual if we just allow it. It is completely natural for us to resist this and we must be fully aware that this battle is linked directly with our Fallen Nature and it is something that only we can overcome with the Love of God
God approached Samuel with a whisper. A whisper by its definition is an intimate form of communication with the message intended for only a small group of people or more commonly for an individual. When it is used a very personal message is often involved. If someone is distracted or otherwise preoccupied that message can be lost. Through the relationships of God throughout Sacred Scripture intimate relationships are revealed to be
a preferred form of communication reaching its perfection with the New Covenant in the form of prayer. In reality we are not accustomed to this intimacy and the silence that it brings. Silence, which we perceive is a form of rejection is actually the first step in a deep personal relationship with God.
What did Jesus say about prayer? He said that we must go to into our inner room and shut the door. This is very important because it indicates that if we are to benefit with our relationship with our creator then we must experience him alone and in the silence that only our personal space can provide. We then must exercise our relationship and make it stronger through a rich and engaged prayer life enforced by continuous worship and praise it our creator. We cannot choose when to engage God. This puts us above him. He is already constantly with us. We have just ignored him so much that we cannot even acknowledge him when he is already here.
We as Christians know that God is with us. Now we must understand and feel what that actually means. To do that we must pray in silence and enjoy that silence without any distractions. We cannot get in our own way.
Deacon Tom Anthony
My sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus,
We are all called to follow the Lord Jesus. Just as all peoples of the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, were called to be faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so are we and especially now that we have Christ Jesus as the final revelation. The Book of Samuel shows us that we must wait on the Lord and listen for His Word. The First Letter to the Corinthians tells us that the redemption of our body is part of this plan. And the Gospel reminds us that sometimes we set out to seek the Lord and find out that it was the Lord who called us first.
Discipleship! We want to be faithful to this God who has sent His Only Son to save us and who gives us His Own Spirit. We are all a bit like Samuel in the first reading today, from the First Book of Samuel: we are confused about who is calling us. Often we can think that it is our human situation or some friend or a spouse or a religious superior who is calling us—and only then we find out that truly it was the Lord Himself. Every day we can prepare ourselves. We can make the words of Samuel our own: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”
Yet how can we say that we are listening if we do not spend time reading the Scriptures and listening to the Word of God? How can we say that we are listening if we never attend Church services? How can we say that we are listening if we do not listen to the presence of God in our sisters and brothers?
The second reading, from the Letter to the Corinthians reminds us that our bodies are sacred gifts of God and not to be misused. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Today we can find so many ways to numb our bodies with pleasure, with addictions with distractions and with countless way of destruction. We must recognize that our bodies are truly joined to the Lord and members of Christ Himself.
The Gospel brings us back to this direct form of discipleship. In this account from the Gospel of John, it is the followers of John the Baptist who are now seeking out Jesus because of the testimony of John the Baptist. It is clear from this account that Andrew was completely converted by this short encounter with Jesus because he goes to his own brother, Simon, and tells him: We have found the Messiah!! We can only imagine the incredible message that was to Simon. Most likely Simon had his doubts because that seemed to be part of his nature, but he went along and he also becomes completely converted.
Jesus has shown them a path of life that convinced them that He, Jesus, was the long awaited Messiah, the Savior, the one who could lead them to the Lord. May Jesus be that Messiah and Savior in our lives.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
We can hear the Lord calling to each of us today! He called Samuel and He called the first followers of Jesus—and He is calling us as well. Are we listening?
Often we wonder how He speaks to us. He never seems to speak directly—even though we may know of others to whom He seems to speak directly. We can hear in the stories of Samuel and of the first followers of Jesus that they also were not so clear about being called in the beginning. Someone had to point it out to them.
But often the Lord does speak directly to us and we do not know it. We sometimes need someone to point it out to us. For many of us, it is other family members or members of our religious community or of our parish—or sometimes just a complete stranger.
In the story of Samuel, the young Samuel keeps hearing the voice of God and thinks that it is someone else call him. We do that same thing: we sense an attraction to something, we feel a need to do something, we are given a special commission at times—and so often we never think that this might be God calling us. Of course we have to be careful of identifying everything that we want to do with a direct call of God—but so often we are at the other extreme: God seems not present in our world.
In the Gospel we can also identify with going about our own work and not wanting to hear that someone might call us to something else. We don’t want to think that every time someone interrupts us, it might be God. But it might be….
So we are invited today to reflect on our own lives as we hear these stories in the lives of others. Do we ever think that God is actually calling us in the daily events of our lives? Do we think that many of the things that we do might just be in response to His call? Do we look for the divine in the daily elements of our lives?
In our liturgical year we are just getting into “ordinary” time and we need to think that God calls us in the ordinary events of our lives.
Let us ask for eyes of faith that really look for God each day!
Christ in the Desert Monastery
A NOTE FROM DEACON TOM
Starting Sunday January 17th and continuing through Monday January 25th hundreds of clergy, volunteers, Christians, and members of the Cursillo Community will be praying a NINE DAY NOVINA TO THE APOSTLE SAINT PAUL for for the needs of the Chaplains, Staff, Inmates, Volunteers and all of their Families associated with the Correctional Facilities located in the Archdiocese of Boston. Know that they are praying for you.
