At her prompting Jesus turned dirty water into the choices of wine, thus revealing Jesus and His goodness to the world. She will bring us the grace we need to bring all souls to her Son, including our own.

Third Sunday in Ordinary time. January 26th, 2014

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” I am sure this passage from Isaiah sounds familiar to you, as we just heard it on Christmas. In today’s Gospel, Jesus refers explicitly to it when He says, “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali…Galilee of the Gentiles, the people living in darkness have seen a great light.” Why is Jesus using this passage from Isaiah? Perhaps, knowing the significance of these ancient cities might help to answer this question.

Seven centuries before the first Christmas and the coming of the Light of the World, Zebulun and Naphtali were cities of Israel located near the Northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. These cities, because of their lack of faith, were the very first to fall to the Assyrians who became the world power after Israel. When these cities fell, most of the Israeli inhabitants were carried off into exile. Replacing them were Assyrian immigrants; and so as a result, the cities become for the most part pagan cities, cities without faith in the One True God. As a consequence, Zebulun and Naphtali were labeled by Israel as “Galilee of the Gentiles” or “Heathen Galilee.”

The prophet Isaiah in our first reading is saying that while these Israeli cities were the first to experience God’s punishments in the form of being conquered and exiled, so they would one day be the first to experience God’s Word of Salvation and thus restoration to the light of truth and of the true faith. And so it is that Jesus in our Gospel begins his public ministry by going to Capernaum, which was in the very midst of this “Heathen Galilee.” In the setting of this area of great loss of faith, St. Matthew lets us know clearly that Jesus as now come to save all men and women, Jew or otherwise…As Isaiah prophesied, Jesus is the great light shining in the darkness. Mankind walked in darkness until Jesus was born in Bethlehem and a then a Great Light shone in the world—the true Light from Light.

And so, in our Gospel today, as we read of Jesus going back to Galilee to fulfill the prophecy spoken about in Isaiah, we see Him doing something we could not have expected. There in the land of great loss of faith, and so great darkness, Jesus, God Himself, looks for disciples, simple men to help Him bring His light to the world. It would seem that Jesus, who is the “Light of the World,” after all, would not need anyone to help Him. He certainly taught and showed signs of His divinity through the healings and miracles He performed, but yet this was not enough. And so, He calls two sets of brothers to share in His work, to bring His healing and His salvation to the world.

As the territory of Galilee was pagan, so too is so much of our world- so much of our world is without God and without His great Truth which sets the soul free by bringing it out of darkness. However, Jesus is still that great light shining in the darkness of our modern age which as become once again steeped in the darkness of error and sin, of relativism and indifference; like Naphtali and Zebulun who had faith and lost it, whole areas, even whole countries, that were once Christian have for all practical purposes become pagan again.

Yet nevertheless, Jesus today, once again, desires to come as light to all those souls of these areas, which are longer aware of their human dignity as sons and daughters of the true and living God, they are no longer aware of their ultimate goal in this life—which is to attain their eternal salvation and reach God in Heaven. And Jesus message today for us, who have been given the light of Faith, is that Jesus, as he did with Andrew and Peter, wants us now to be the ones to bring Him and the light of His truth to modern souls steeped in the darkness of unbelief and sin. Jesus is calling each one of us, as He called the disciples in today’s Gospel to be Fishers of Men bringing the message of His Gospel of Truth and Life to the world, bringing the hope of salvation to all men. This is our great calling as believing Christians, a calling that we in love, in Charity, must answer. This is our great task as Catholics; it is what caring for the poor primarily means—we feed them primarily by given them the truth, and the truth is ultimately Christ Himself. We Catholics are called to be the Anima Mundi—the Soul of the World!!!

However, before we can carry out our task to bring Christ’s light to the world, we ourselves must be ever more convinced that Jesus and His truth give the only adequate answers to the current desperate needs of our world and to all the deep questions of life such as what is good, what is evil? How can I be truly happy? What is this world all about? Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? Is death the end of everything? Before we can help others find the answers to these and other questions, we ourselves must believe with all our being that Jesus is the only one who throws a searching and revealing light on all these uncertainties of life, that He alone is the solution to the worlds seemingly insurmountable problems.

And so we ourselves need to let Jesus’ light penetrate more deeply into our own personal darkness, whether it be the darkness of our own sins, problems in our health, our finances, our personality, problems with injustice, loneliness, ingratitude, and unreturned love. In the bright light of what Jesus said and did, what He taught and revealed to us about the Father and the Father’s great love for us, we have to have faith and trust that He and His Church is our certain way through the perplexing problems of our own life. We need to experience more brightly Jesus’ light within the darkness of our own soul and feel His Divine Power and His Divine healing and loving touch.

We need the Lord to light us; we need to let the Lord enlighten us. We need to be converted more completely in order to let the light of Jesus more fully into our own lives. To do so, by heeding His command to repent and believe in the Gospel in order that we can be used as instruments of Christ-instruments of His Divine Mercy in the conversion of others. Let us never forget that so many souls and their eternal happiness and destiny depend on us, on you and I, fulfilling this great calling from Jesus. And so for our part, and with the help of Jesus and His holy Mother, we need to work hard to know better and accept more fully Jesus’ truth and teachings in our lives; we need to make a great effort to know the authentic teachings of the Church in order to see more clearly that they alone give us light in our lives, but only if we by God’s grace live them in their fullness. In other words, we too need to be converted to the truth more deeply and conform our lives to it more completely before we can share it with others and share it with others so they can open their souls to the Light of Christ.

Jesus came after the world was in darkness for centuries. And He desires to come again to our present darkness through you and me. He desires to use us as torches to light the darkness of our day. WE are called to be a light to the world. Jesus says to us, as He said to the disciples who had been fishing all night, “Put out in to the deep.” Like the disciples we are called to be fisherman in pagan territory.

The first disciples’ lives were not free of struggles, difficulties, they had their problems, yet they made a great act of faith, letting Jesus’ light into the darkness of their lives, becoming His faithful disciples by sharing that light with others. Let us repeat their words, “At Thy word Lord I will lower my nets.” and let us imitate them by putting out into the deep of Christ, of His love and His Truth. Like them, let us answer that call of Jesus to share that Love and that Truth with others, with every one, not just with those with whom it is easy or comfortable but even with those who are difficult…these too are the “poor” that Pope Francis speaks about. But not to proselytize them, not just to convert them, but to change the world by leading them to Jesus and helping them to become intimate friends of Him in union and in love with His true Church. This is how the darkness of this present age can end, this is how great evils such as abortion will end, by one person being converted to Jesus Christ, to intimacy with Him, friendship with Him and then they become a touch lighting another to Jesus, then that soul too will be lighted and soon thousand and millions of torches driving away the darkness, driving away the culture of death, bringing the life of Christ to the world…And then the people who sit in darkness will see a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death, a light will have arisen.” It will be you and I filled, aflame with, the Light of Christ, with the Love of Christ burning in our souls…I have come to earth to set it aflame, Oh how I wish it was already burning.

Let us turn to our Blessed Mother for help. She provoked the first miracle, which inaugurated the public ministry of her Son Jesus. She saw the need and turned to Jesus trusting Him to fulfill the need by saying, “Do what ever He tells you.” At her prompting Jesus turned dirty water into the choices of wine, thus revealing Jesus and His goodness to the world. She will bring us the grace we need to bring all souls to her Son, including our own.