Wednesday After Epiphany
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Christmas Weekday
1 Jn 4:11-18/Mk 6:45-52 (Lectionary #214)
The Responsorial Psalm tells us, “Lord, every nation on earth will adore you” (Psalm 72) as a support for hope that motivates us to love.
1John 4: 11-18 tells us that if we show love to one another, we will grow in love, and God’s love will be “brought to perfection in us.” What is the sign this is happening?
The way we know we are truly in union with Christ is that “he has given us his Spirit.” If we think like Christ and love like Christ, we must be alive by the Spirit of Christ.
To love is to help others be and become all they can be. But Christ’s Spirit tells us “the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.” “Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.” So what holds us back from the loving act of sharing him with every person we deal with?
Fear. We are afraid of failure. We think either that people are impervious to religion or that we are inadequate to present it; that even if we are discreet in our way of embodying and expressing the Good News about Jesus, they will not respond.
Mark 6: 45-52 reminds us that the apostles felt this way in the early Church. Jesus had ascended into heaven (“gone up the mountain”) and left them alone to take care of his people. The “wind was against them.” They were being “tossed about” in stormy seas of controversy and persecution. They were scared. And when “Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea,” they “thought he was a ghost…. and were terrified.” When he got into the boat and “the wind died down,” they were “completely astounded.” They just didn’t get it.
The problem was, “they had not understood the incident of the loaves.” They did not understand that when Jesus took the loaves, “looked up to heaven, blessed, broke, and gave them to his disciples…” this was a preview of Eucharist.
There is a mix of timeframes here. When Jesus multiplied the loaves, neither Eucharist nor the Church was yet established, and the apostles had no responsibilities. But the story is a commentary on the present. It tells us that if we understand Eucharist, we understand that Jesus is always with us, always in the boat, and no contrary winds of culture or contradiction can keep us from bringing “every nation on earth” to adore him. If we have faith to believe this, hope that overcomes fear, and love to keep trying, then through our efforts to give Christ to the world, we will see his love being “brought to perfection among us.”
Initiative: If you want to know Jesus, accept him as universal Savior. Keep trying to bring people to him, asking him to work with you, in you, through you.
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