January 6; Thursday after Epiphany
1 John 4:19 - 5:4 / Luke 4:14-22
Queen Victoria of England had a summer residence at Balmoral, England. One day she was out walking alone and got caught in a rainstorm. She ran to a small cottage for shelter and asked the woman who answered the door if she could borrow an umbrella. She promised to return it the next day. Grudgingly, the woman, who had two umbrellas, gave her the one that was almost useless. The woman was astounded the next day when a servant returned it with a thank-you note from the queen. "Oh, if I'd only known it was really the queen!" the woman said. "Oh, if I'd only known it was really the queen!”
***
Will we someday cry out about our treatment of the needy, "Oh,
if I'd only known it was really Jesus!" “Whenever you did this for one of
the least important of these. you did it for me!” Matthew 25:40
***
Speaking in the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus says that God’s word is fulfilled today, that he proclaims and is the good news of joy to everyone. Similarly, Jesus proclaims to us today in our Eucharistic assemblies the good news of God’s liberating love, and he is himself that good news, for he is present among us. This Eucharist is for us here today the moment of grace. The Spirit of Jesus rests on us now and gives us the capacity to speak and to be his message of hope, joy and love to our neighbor.
***
God created us in His image and likeness. It means that He created us with His love and in His love. He also created each of us unique, so that as much as we have a lot in common as human beings, we are also unique in our own way. And each of us also has a unique mission in our life and that will be our contribution to the good of humanity.
In the gospel, we heard that Jesus, with the power of the Spirit in Him, returned to Galilee, and His reputation spread throughout the countryside. When He went to the synagogue and stood up to read, He read this from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me"
Jesus knew what He had been given, and with that, what He had to do as His mission. We too have been given the Spirit of love. As the 1st reading says: We are to love because God loved us first. We are to carry out the mission of love in our lives and we can only do it with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in our mission of
love so that as much as our way of loving is different from each other, God's
love will be experienced by all.
***
Prayer
Lord God, loving Father, here in this Eucharistic assembly you
let your Son speak to us today his stirring word of hope and joy. Pour out on us the Spirit of Jesus, let him
open us to the word of your Son and to his living presence, that we too may go
out to our brothers and sisters to speak to them his liberating word, to be his
healing presence, and to be grace to all whom we encounter, on account of your
Son in our midst, Jesus Christ, our Lord forever. Amen
