2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B — January 17th, 2021

After the joyous festivities of the Christmas season, the Church begins the journey of Ordinary Time, leading us week by week through Christ’s public ministry. Though 2021 is Lectionary Year B, the Year of Mark, this Sunday’s reading is one of several in Cycle B that are actually taken from the Gospel of John. This is because Mark is the shortest of the Gospels and does not require an entire year to read at Sunday Masses. In addition, John does not have its own lectionary cycle, but rather is read at special times throughout the liturgical year; using it for several weeks of Year B enables us to read portions of this Gospel that might not otherwise turn up in the Sunday Lectionary. Besides, it’s always a treat to ponder and study passages from the beautiful Fourth Gospel!

Diving right into the Gospel for this Sunday, one Sister described how meaningful she found Our Lord’s encounter with Simon Peter at the end of the reading. “Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon …’” What was this “look” of Jesus like? What did the future head of the Apostles see in the eyes of the Incarnate Word on that fateful day? What love, what eagerness was in Jesus’ Heart as He saw the glorious future in store for the simple fisherman before Him! He looks the same way at each of us when He calls us to follow Him – for instance, in a conversion, a deepening of faith, or a religious vocation. Sister also connected this verse with the way Christ “turned and looked at Peter” during the Passion. In this case, the loving “look” of Christ served to draw Peter to contrition after his threefold denial. However, our free will is a major factor in how this gaze of Jesus affects our lives; after all, He also “looked at” and “loved” the rich young man in Luke’s Gospel and was refused. May St. Peter intercede for us, that we may always respond to Our Lord’s look of love with eagerness and obedience like his!

We also discussed the beautiful First Reading – the call of the prophet Samuel. A number of Sisters brought out how striking God’s patience is in this passage; even after being misunderstood three times, He continues gently calling until the young boy learns the proper response. This, of course, is exactly the way He is with each of us. So many times the Lord must repeat Himself when speaking to us, either because our hearts are hardened or because we simply don’t “get it”! But, fortunately for all of us, He is incredibly persistent. One Sister even pointed out that, in a certain sense, God has been eagerly “waiting for us” for all eternity, longing for the moment when each unrepeatable, irreplaceable human soul will be ready to hear and heed His call. Surely He felt this way when He called each of the Apostles – and perhaps they saw on His face a glimmer of that Divine joy and eagerness when He said to them, “Come, and you will see.”

Finally, we spoke about the Second Reading from 1 Corinthians – St. Paul’s exhortation for us to remember that our bodies are “the temple of the Holy Spirit.” A Sister drew our attention to one particular line that stood out to her: “the body is for the Lord.” It is not just our souls that are saved and made holy for the Lord, but even our physical bodies will one day be glorified in Heaven, at the last resurrection. After all, God was the one Who chose to create the material world – how could we then despise it? St. John Paul II explored this truth in great depth and beauty in his Theology of the Body, a work that has become more and more popular in our day. In fact, the sacredness of the human body and the material world has always been one of the most challenging teachings of the Church. One Sister described it as the “scandal of the Incarnation”– this delicate but beautiful balancing act between spirit and matter, God and man.

The heresy of Gnosticism, which proposes a dualistic universe (spirit = good, matter = evil) has cropped up in different forms in every age of Christianity. Why? Perhaps because a simple dualism is easy to grasp, while the nuanced Catholic position requires far more effort to understand and live faithfully. But what glorious horizons it opens out to us! In the Resurrection of Christ, we see what we are all destined to become – fully human, body and soul, yet utterly infused with the life of God. Our Lady received this privilege “early” in her bodily Assumption, because of her unique role in salvation history, but the Church holds out to us a beautiful hope: that is the destiny God has in mind for each of us!