Second Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle A

January 19, 2014

Review the Readings 

Listen to the Readings

In the first reading, the people Isaiah was addressing were in exile in Babylon. They had lost everything. They were at an all time low.  

Have you experienced a very low period in your life?

 

Isaiah gave them and us the hope that God will not abandon his people; that He will send someone to help them and all people.  

We hear in the reading what is call the second oracle of the Suffering Servant.  One will come that will bring salvation for the whole world. Once again those in exile of Babylon were given hope.  

This is also for us.

God will not abandon us.

In the second reading, written somewhere around 50AD, Paul went to preach in Corinth, which was a Roman colony and was morally corrupt.  His letter fulfills what we hear in the first reading of Isaiah. Even to the pagans in corrupt Corinth, God will send messengers to bring the news of forgiveness and salvation.

 

Paul was that messenger, as too was the Corinthian Christian community.  

These words also apply to us. We are called to make the compassion and forgiveness of God present to others. We are commissioned to carry on what Paul was sent to do. We, of the current age, are to make God present in the world today

In the gospel,  St.John the Baptist recognized that Jesus was the one sent from God.

 

 

 

He is the Son of God

 

God has kept his promise not to abandon his people.

 

Each of us, through our baptism, are called to make God's mercy and forgiveness present in the world today.

We are to make Christ present for others.

Once again today, we can renew what we were commissioned to do at our baptism.  

God is made present for others in our mercy, compassion, forgiveness, love of the enemy, etc. just as Jesus did.