A New Year of Hope: The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025

A New Year of Hope:

The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025 

January 26, 2025

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Nehemiah 8:2-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-21

 

Ezra, the ancient priest, read from the scrolls of the Torah at the restoration of the Temple, and signified that the Commandments of God were given to the people. Jesus entered the synagogue in the fashion of Ezra to give a new commandment. It was a symbolic action to signify a new beginning and a time of favor for the people. Ezra reestablished the commandments in the restored Israel; Jesus became the new commandment in the newly reconstituted Israel. A new day had been inaugurated.

 

We are in a new Jubilee year designed to bring us hope, and a remarkable quality of hope is that it is renewed each day. We need hope to live and to have faith. The initial speech of Jesus was the beginning of God’s new project to bring the life of heaven to earth where we can see God active and as the one who creates all things new. His words bring comfort, healing, and hope. He does not give explanations for the existing, persistent pain and sorrow in the world. He does not explain suffering, illness, or death. They exist as part of creation. He lets us know how God feels about our human condition. God wants us to know that he understands what it means to be human.

 

Jesus brings glad tidings. What is the message? – that God knows who we are, our state of life, our daily toil, and yet, God finds us worthy of love, even if we do unkind things, are filled with anger or negativity, or are unhappy with who we are. God loved us first, and there is nothing we can do to get remove it. We are stuck with a God who finds us lovable and wants us to live in the greatest happiness that we can. 

 

Jesus liberates us from whatever oppresses us. What is the message? No tyrant can ever enslave us. Sin will never have the last word. Nor will death. God will deal with the tyrants who oppress us from the outside because evil will never outlast goodness and love. God will assist us with our inner tyrants of addiction, compulsions, judgments, or whatever holds us captive. God gives us fundamental freedom and will help us achieve our best actualization. We will never be permanent captives of the forces that oppress.

 

Jesus gives us sight when we cannot see. What is the message? His Words will lead us to greater insight, compassion, and understanding. Each in our own time will come to greater knowledge of what God is doing for us and with us. We will understand when we open our hearts and minds to God’s works, and we choose the wisdom of life with Jesus. All the good that you do in the present time will last into God’s future. Your goodness remains, and life becomes more bearable, more able to understand joy. As we gain new sight, we hold onto that elusive hope that gives us joy.

 

We are called to celebrate a jubilee year in which we have a new chance to build God’s kingdom. When we choose understanding over judgments, kindness over aggressiveness, patience over violence, wisdom over ideologies, compassion over righteousness, then we are nourishing the world with love and creating anew God’s kingdom. In this year of hope, we must nourish the world with goodness and love. We must give hope a chance.

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

First Reading: 

Monday: (Hebrews 9) Christ is mediator of a new covenant: since a death has taken place for deliverance from transgressions under the first covenant, those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.

 

Tuesday: (Hebrews 10) Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of them, it can never make perfect those who come to worship by the same sacrifices that they offer continually each year.

 

Wednesday: (Hebrews 10) Every priest stands daily at his ministry, offering frequently those same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But this one offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God.

 

Thursday: (Hebrews 10) Since through the Blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil,
that is, his flesh, and since we have “a great priest over the house of God,” let us approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust.

Friday (Hebrews 10) Remember the days past when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a great contest of suffering. At times you were publicly exposed to abuse and affliction; at other times you associated yourselves with those so treated.

 

Saturday (Hebrews 11) Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Because of it the ancients were well attested. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Mark 3) The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "By the prince of demons he drives out demons."

 

Tuesday: (Mark 3) The mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house. Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him. A crowd seated around him told him,
“Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.”

 

Wednesday (Mark 4) On another occasion, Jesus began to teach by the sea. A very large crowd gathered around him so that he got into a boat on the sea and sat down. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on land.

 

Thursday (Mark 4) “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light.

 

Friday (Mark 4) “This is how it is with the Kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how.

 

Saturday (Mark 4) On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples: “Let us cross to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him.

 

Saints of the Week

 

January 26: Timothy and Titus, bishops (1st century), were disciples of Paul who later became what we know of as bishops. Timothy watched over the people of Ephesus and Titus looked after Crete. Both men worked with Paul and became a community leader. Timothy was martyred while Titus died of old age. 

 

January 27: Angela Merici (1474-1540), was the founder of the Ursuline nuns. Relatives raised her when her parents died when she was 10. As an adult, she tended to the needs of the poor and with some friends, she taught young girls at their home. These friends joined an association that later became a religious order. Ursula was the patron of medieval universities.

 

January 28: Thomas Aquinas, priest and Doctor (1225-1274), studied in a Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino as a boy. He joined the newly formed Dominicans where he studied in France and Italy. He is a giant scholar. He wrote much on Scripture and theology, including his summation of theology (Summa Theologiae). He wrote several songs for liturgy, such as the Tantum Ergo, Pange Lingua, and Adoro Te Devote.

 

January 31: John Bosco, priest (1815-1888), formed his Society to aid children who were imprisoned. He used Francis de Sales as his inspiration. He taught poor and working class boys in the evenings wherever it was possible to meet them - in fields, factories, or homes. A sister community was set up to assist young girls who were sent to work. 

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• January 26, 1611. The first Jesuit missionaries sailed from Europe for New France (Canada). 
• January 27, 1870. The Austrian government endeavored to suppress the annual grant of 8,000 florins to the theological faculty of Innsbruck and to drive the Jesuit professors from the university, because of their support of the Papal Syllabus. 
• January 28, 1853. Fr. General John Roothaan, wishing to resign his office, summoned a General Congregation, but died on May 8, before it assembled. 
• January 29, 1923. Woodstock scholastics kept a fire vigil for several months to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from setting the college on fire. 
• January 30, 1633. At Avignon, Fr. John Pujol, a famous master of novices, died. He ordered one of them to water a dry stick, which miraculously sprouted. 
• January 31, 1774. Fr. General Laurence Ricci, a prisoner in Castel S Angelo, claimed his liberty, since his innocence had been fully vindicated. He received from the Papal Congregation the reply that they would think about it. Pope Clement XIV was said at this time to be mentally afflicted. 
• February 1, 1549. The first Jesuit missionaries to go to Brazil set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, under Fr. Emmanuel de Nobrega.