THE 6TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - DOORWAY TO THE SPRINGTIME OF THE CHURCH..........

45 Days into the Year of Our Lord 2010, we come to the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time. It's more than ordinary however as societally it is St. Valentine's Day and culturally it is the Chinese Lunar New Year. Our Sacred Scriptures as Catholic-Christians today are from Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26;. The Prophet Jeremiah was frustrated with the king, the priests and the people in today's 1st Reading not only because they had first ignored him, then persecuted him, and finally abused him tortuously almost to the point of death, but especially because they had turned away from the Lord God and broken their relationship with the Divine. Thus he prophetically and courageously called them back from their sinful and selfish ways and to their core existence as servants of the Living and True God. Preoccuppation with false idols of self consideration do not adhere to the Truth that our hope and trust does not rely on ourselves or our possessions, but on God. Paul in writing to the Church of Corinth after returning from his missionary journey to them, admonishes the Corinthians to be heartfelt and brave in continuing to faithfully believe in the Resurrection of Jesus,despite the doubts they may encounter. Christ has truly been raised from the dead and that Truth sets us free and renews us. Luke's Gospel proclamation on this 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, is his versio of the Beatitudes, the so described, "Pearls of Christian Wisdom". Scripture scholarship refers to this passage in Luke as the, 'Sermon on the Plain', for it's opening words describe Jesus delivering His message to "Twelve, as well as the many "Disciples" of Jesus and a goodly number who had come to "Hear Him Speak", who were curious about what Jesus had to say, but were not Hisfollowers on level ground, not on a mountaintop, as in Matthew's Gospel. The other notable difference in Luke's proclamation of the Beatitudes is, he mentions only 4, not Matthew's 8.
Luke's read, "Blessed are you Poor; Blessed are you who Hunger; Blessed are you who Weep; Blessed are you who are Hated, Excluded, Insulted; stating the counter cultural reality of God's Love for them and serious disappointment with those who are the opposite of them. The otherwise self absorbed and sleek of the world will be very dismayed in eternity, for the broken and downtrodden will rejoice and be fulfilled in God's Kingdom, while the sinful and selfishly rich and mighty will suffer, as God's Justice reverses the temporal order of those who had and were ungenerous and gives to those who had not and were overlooked and underserved by those who were self absorbed an indifferent to them while in the world.
And so as you mark this abbreviated 3 day week of Ordinary Time that becomes Lent this Wednesday - which is Ash Wednesday; ask yourself what act of kindness or generosity can you complete to keep the spirit and truth of the Beatitudes alive in your hearts and minds ? Who will you respond to in a generous way, so as to be less self centered and more Love of God and Neighbor centered. The Beatitudes challenge us to do exactly that. To BE of an ATTITUDE that is caring, sharing, selfless, in building up the Kingdom of God here and now..........In The Love of Jesus the Christ Whose Kingdon Comes In All Of Us, Fr. Troy