Weekly Bulletin - January 2007
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- 07 - Epiphany of the Lord
- 14 - Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
- 21 - Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
- 28 - Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Appearances can be deceiving,” as the saying goes. As we celebrate the epiphania, the “appearing” of the eternal Word of God on earth, this is still true. What rapturous foresight must have filled Isaiah as he wrote the words we hear today. How, for four hundred years, they must have filled the hearts of the people of Israel with hope for the day when God’s glory would shine on them. How deceived some must have felt when the glory of God came to them in the lowliest and humblest of human lives.
Life is full of surprises, some pleasant, some not. The Scriptures are filled with stories of God’s surprises cropping up where least expected: younger children obtaining the inheritance; the lowliest being seated up highest; an itinerant preacher, killed like a criminal, exalted to eternal, heavenly glory.
Some of Saint Paul’s best known and most beloved imagery is contained in the passages from First Corinthians that we have heard last week and this week: the many gifts granted by the one same Spirit and the many members making up the one Body of Christ. Few passages from sacred scripture more accurately sum up how Christian vocations work together.
It is doubtful that Saint Paul, when he sat down to write what we now know as the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, knew that he was penning what was to become one of the keystones of Christian ethics. In this brief passage, he set down ideals about love that have held fast through the centuries. Sometimes we may think that because these are ideals to which we aspire, we are excused from them in our daily living.