{"id":2017,"date":"2017-01-22T12:31:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T17:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2017-01-22T12:31:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T17:31:37","slug":"3rd-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-a-homily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/3rd-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-a-homily\/","title":{"rendered":"3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily"},"content":{"rendered":"

3rd<\/sup> Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A<\/a>
\nIsaiah 8:23-9:3
\nPsalm 27:104, 13-14
\n1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17
\nMatthew 4:12-23
\nJanuary 22, 2017<\/p>\n

Paul had helped start the Christian community at Corinth.\u00a0 Now, he has heard about division and immorality going on there so he writes this letter to them to help them address the situation.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s portion of Paul\u2019s letter centers on divisions and rivalries that have arisen.\u00a0 People are identifying themselves by who baptized them or taught them about the Christian faith.\u00a0 They are saying, \u201cI belong to Paul,\u201d <\/em>or \u201cI belong to Apollos<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul tells them that it doesn\u2019t matter who baptized them or who taught them.\u00a0 Everything and everyone should point to Christ not to human people.<\/p>\n

We can see a lot of division in our society today and it is getting once.\u00a0 We saw it in the elections in the Fall and we continue to see as the newly elected officials take office.<\/p>\n

We can see division in general society over beliefs or background.<\/p>\n

We can also see division in what it means to be Christian.\u00a0 Who can count all the denominations?\u00a0 Some of the denominations aren\u2019t that different from each other while others are very different.\u00a0 The Christian Church started as one.\u00a0 The first major split came in 1054 when the Orthodox and Catholic Church split.\u00a0 The next big split came in the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 This year is the 500th<\/sup> anniversary of when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the doors of a church in Germany objecting to some of the practices of the church.<\/p>\n

It used to be it took major differences to lead to a schism or new denomination.\u00a0 Now, people go looking for a church that follows their beliefs and if they can\u2019t find it, they might go start a new church.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther gets the credit for starting the Protestant Reformation but Luther didn\u2019t want to start a new denomination.\u00a0 His goal was to help correct points where he thought the Church had strayed.<\/p>\n

Today we celebrate the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time of Year A.\u00a0 This reading from Paul is the proper reading for today but it fits something going on right now.\u00a0 There hasn\u2019t been a lot of talk about it but this week we celebrate a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.\u00a0 It started last Wednesday on the 18th<\/sup> and will end on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on the 25th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

This week of prayer dates back to 1908 when the Atonement Franciscan Convent in the Episcopal Church outside New York City called for a week of prayer for unity.\u00a0 Since then, many Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church have come together to pray for unity.<\/p>\n

We need to pray for unity, both in the church and in secular society.\u00a0 There is way too much division in the world.\u00a0 We spend more time thinking about how we are different rather than how we are alike.<\/p>\n

We can have different skin color.\u00a0 We can speak different languages.\u00a0 We can have different cultural practices but we all have one common creator who is one God.<\/p>\n

Our belief is in one God but our God is a triune God.\u00a0 There are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.\u00a0 They are three persons yet one God coming together in perfect unity.\u00a0 The Trinity gives us a model of unity for the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit, while three persons, work together<\/em> with one Will.<\/p>\n

Everybody united to do one will?\u00a0 This meant seem impossible to imagine.\u00a0 As I already said there are many divisions in the whole today.\u00a0 It can be very hard to get people to work together.\u00a0 A lot of people think they have the right answer.<\/p>\n

When religious groups come together in dialogue, sometimes they just seem to look for the lowest common denominator of what they all believe in.\u00a0 If we are sincere in working for unity, the lowest common denominator is only a starting point, not an end point.<\/p>\n

In any dialogue it can often be best to start with what can be agreed upon.\u00a0 This makes for a solid foundation.\u00a0 For Christians this begins with the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that Christ was born, taught and cured many people, then died for us to show us salvation and the Resurrection.<\/p>\n

This is what the light of Christ offers to all of us but our Catholic faith has so much more to offer.\u00a0 We believe in the Real Presence, we believe in the moral teachings that comes from God.\u00a0 We believe in the Communion of Saints.<\/p>\n

We believe in these doctrines and many others yet we probably don\u2019t talk about them often.\u00a0 When we don\u2019t talk about them, we forget about them.\u00a0 For instance, since we don\u2019t talk about Purgatory much, there are some people who think we stopped believing in it but it still exists.<\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t we talk about them?\u00a0 The two reasons that come to mind for me are \u201cfear<\/em>\u201d and our own \u201clack of knowledge.\u201d\u00a0 We fear getting into an argument with others and then we fear not have the knowledge to back up what we say.<\/p>\n

We need to do our part to learn about our Catholic faith.\u00a0 As we do this, we can turn to the same help, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to help us understand what our faith teachings and then the courage to dialogue with others about what we believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Isaiah 8:23-9:3 Psalm 27:104, 13-14 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17 Matthew 4:12-23 January 22, 2017 Paul had helped start the Christian community at Corinth.\u00a0 Now, he has heard about division and immorality going on there so he writes this letter to them to help them address the situation. Today\u2019s …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[220,9,82],"tags":[238,237],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-wx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}