82 / 88
Thursday after Epiphany
I John 4:19-5:4
Psalm 72: 1-2, 14 & 15BC, 17
Luke 4:14-22A
Summary
In today’s first reading John ex-
plains to his followers that we love
God because “He first loved us.”
And that it is not possible to love
God without loving one another.
“If anyone says, “I love God,” but
hates his brother, he is a liar….”
And how do we love our brother/neighbor? John tells us we do this “by following
God’s commandments…which are not burdensome.”
Reflection
I chose to reflect on the first reading today rather than the gospel but I’m really
writing about both of them because I think today’s gospel is
implicit
in the first
Reading. In the gospel Jesus reads the following aloud from Isaiah while he is in
the temple, ”
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to
bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and
recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year
acceptable to the Lord.”
Then he calmly rolls up the scroll, looks his listeners in the eyes and says to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Using today’s vernacular, I imagine some of the people listening to Jesus saying,
“Whaaaat? How can
this guy
claim to be the fulfillment of scripture?
This
is the
‘messiah’ we’ve been waiting for? Who does he think he is?”
But they don’t, at least not yet (not long after this of course they do try to throw
him off a cliff). In this moment though, they respect him. I think it’s because the
truth of his words resonate with the truth in their hearts. This
is
what the Messiah
would do – set captives (all of us) free. And I feel that this is what John is telling
us in his letter – that this is what each of us is here to do. We love God by loving
our neighbor. When we love our neighbor we are loving God. The two great com-