Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion Rein­ter­pret­ing the text of Isai­ah (61:1–2a) in Luke 4:16–20, the Evan­gel­ist Luke presents the mis­sion of Jesus as a mis­sion of hope, encour­age­ment, susten­ance, motiv­a­tion, lib­er­a­tion, and psy­cho­lo­gic­al reas­sur­ance. We saw this in last Sunday’s Gos­pel read­ing (John 9), and this Sunday’s Gos­pel con­tin­ues and con­tains the same theme. Laz­arus’ sick­ness and even­tu­al death are events that will mani­fest the shek­i­nah (glory) of God. It alludes to the death and resur­rec­tion of Jesus. The name Laz­arus is men­tioned only in chapters 11 and 12…

Read More »

Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion Rightly did Jesus indic­ate in the Gos­pel accord­ing to Mat­thew (5:17) that his mis­sion was not to abol­ish neither the Law nor the Proph­ets but, to ful­fil them. Such ful­fil­ment includes the cor­rec­tion of wrong beliefs and theo­logy of Juda­ism by then and of Chris­tian­ity today. In this Sunday Gos­pel, John chapter nine (John 9) is meant to show that things are not always the way they look and the way we think. As Isai­ah (55:8) rightly poin­ted out, God’s ways are quite different…

Read More »

Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion    The Len­ten peri­od is gradu­ally pro­gress­ing towards the resur­rec­tion, the ful­fil­ment of sal­va­tion. The Len­ten Sundays con­tin­ue to enrich us with mes­sages that pre­pare us spir­itu­ally for the paschal mys­tery. While the First Sunday invited us not to allow food, power, and wealth suf­foc­ate our desire for God, the Second Sunday explained to us the right atti­tude in the pres­ence of God. This Third Sunday teaches us that God is spir­it and there­fore, must be wor­shipped in spir­it and truth. That is, our…

Read More »

Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion    Hav­ing suc­cess­fully con­cluded his retreat, Jesus offi­cially begins his mis­sion. As soon as he came down from the wil­der­ness, and with the with­draw­al of John the Baptist, Jesus trans­ferred to Caper­naum, by the lake, in the region of Zebu­lum and Neph­tali, where he began his mis­sion with the fol­low­ing words: “Repent, for the king­dom of heav­en has come near” (Matt 4:17). “In the Gos­pel accord­ing to Mark (1:15), we also read that as soon as John the Baptist was arres­ted, Jesus went into…

Read More »

Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion With the cel­eb­ra­tion of the Ash Wed­nes­day, the Church (par­tic­u­larly the Cath­ol­ic Church) begins an import­ant and unique moment in her litur­gic­al cel­eb­ra­tions – the sea­son of Lent. The Len­ten sea­son recalls the bib­lic­al peri­od of forty days and forty nights Jesus spent in the desert in pre­par­a­tion for his mis­sion. Jesus’ forty days and forty nights in the desert recalls the forty days and forty nights that Moses spent on the Moun­tain dur­ing his encounter with God, and where he neither ate nor…

Read More »