MASS READINGS
January 31, 2010 (Readings on USCCB website)
COLLECT PRAYER
Lord our God, help us to love you with all our hearts and to love all men as you love them. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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There is a shocking turnaround in today's Gospel. The people with whom Jesus grew up were assembled in the Nazareth synagogue. After they heard him read Sacred Scripture and give a one sentence homily "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" St. Luke tells us that "all spoke well of him and were AMAZED at the gracious words that came from his mouth." But that amazement soon turned into doubt and then into fury. — Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sunday Readings
The first reading is taken from the book of Jeremiah (Jer 1:4-5, 17-19). Jeremiah is the second of the four great prophets of Israel; a contemporary of Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk. He was born in the last part of the reign of Manasseh, about 645 years before the birth of Jesus and almost a century after Isaiah. Today's reading comes from the prologue which gives an account of Jeremiah's calling. It is a dialog between Yahweh and Jeremiah.
The second reading, taken from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12:31-13:13), continues last week's comparison of the Church to the human body. Each part of the body is no greater than any other part; rather, all work together to serve the common good. The second reading also discusses the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel reading is taken from St. Luke (Lk 4:21-30). Last week's Gospel reading was from the beginning of Jesus' public ministry when He went to His home town, Nazareth, and in the synagogue read from the scroll of Isaiah. Today's reading continues this event in His life. Jesus' words so wound the pride of his fellow townspeople that they are ready to kill Him. He doesn't flee but walks away majestically, leaving the crowd paralyzed. As on other occasions men do Him no harm; it was by God's decree that He died on the cross when His hour had come.
Things to Do:
- Read Fr. Roger Landry's Homily for this Sunday.
- Read or reread Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini on Keeping the Lord's Day Holy
Meditation: "Fasching"—Mardi Gras: The Ground of Our Freedom
Fasching—Mardi gras—is certainly not a Church festival. Yet on the other hand, it is unthinkable apart from the Church's calendar. Thus if we reflect on its origin and significance, it can contribute to our understanding of faith.
Fasching has many roots, Jewish, pagan and Christian, and all three point to something common to men of all times and places. It shows a certain correspondence to the feast of Purim in the Jewish calendar, which recalls Israel's deliverance from the menace of persecution of the Jews in the Persian empire, a deliverance brought about, in the biblical account, by Queen Esther. The joyful abandon with which this feast is celebrated is intended to express the feeling of liberation, and on this day it is not only a memory but also a promise: the person who is in the hands of the God of Israel is already, in anticipation, freed from the snares of his enemies.
But behind this exuberant, worldly feast, which had and still has a place in the religious calendar, there is also an awareness of that temporal rhythm which was given classical expression in the Book of Ecclesiastes: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;… a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance" (Qo 3: iff.). Not everything is appropriate at all times; the human being needs a rhythm, and the year gives him this rhythm, both through creation and through the history which faith sets forth in the yearly cycle.
This brings us to the Church's year, which enables man to go through the whole history of salvation in step with the rhythm of creation, simultaneously ordering and purifying the chaotic multiplicity of our nature. Nothing human is omitted from this cycle of creation and history, and only in this way can all human reality, its dark side and its light side, the world of sense and the world of spirit, be saved. Everything finds its place in the whole, which gives it meaning and delivers it from its isolation. So it is foolish to want to prolong Fasching when business and one's agenda seem to recommend it: such extra time, artificially created by ourselves, turns into boredom; man is left alone as his own creator and feels truly forsaken. Then time is no longer the varied gift of creation and history but the monster which devours itself, the empty preoccupation with sameness, whirling us round in a circle of meaninglessness, ultimately devouring us as well.
Let us go back to think about the roots of Fasching. As well as the Jewish, there is the pagan prehistory, whose fierce and menacing features still stare at us in the masks worn in Alpine, Swabian and Alemannic parts of Germany. What lie behind this are the rites for driving out winter and banishing demonic powers: the changes involved in times and seasons seemed to threaten the world's continuance; it was necessary to secure the earth and its fruitfulness against the void to which, in the sleep of winter, the world seemed to come perilously close.
At this point we can observe something of great significance: in the Christian world the demonic mask becomes a light-hearted masquerade, the life-and-death struggle with the demons becomes fun and merriment prior to the seriousness of Lent. This masquerade shows us something we can often see in the psalms and in the prophets: it becomes a mocking of the gods, who no longer need to be feared by those who know the true God. The masks of the gods have become an amusing show, expressing the high spirits of those who can laugh at what once brought terror. To that extent, Fasching actually does contain elements of Christian liberation, the freedom of the One God, perfecting that freedom commemorated in the Jewish feast of Purim.
In the end, however, we are faced with a question: Do we still enjoy this freedom? Or is it not a fact that, ultimately, we would like to free ourselves from God, from creation and from faith, in order to be totally free? And is not the consequence of this that we are once again handed over to the gods, to commercial forces, to greed, to public opinion? God is not the enemy of our freedom but its ground. That is something we ought to relearn in these days. Only love that is almighty can ground a joy that is free from anxiety.
—From Seek That Which Is Above by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
