4th Sunday Ordinary Time January 28, 2024

Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, Mark 1:21-28

God’s authority in our daily lives is important.  Who speaks for God?  Do we want to listen to God?  Are we interested at all in finding the meaning of life outside of ourselves?  The challenges of the readings today keep pointing us outside of ourselves and toward a divine authority who wants to communicate with us but who will never force Himself upon us.

We may think that there is something odd in not wanting to hear God, but so often we ourselves do not want to hear God in His Word, in His Scriptures and in His Church.  Yet at times, if a really strong and charismatic personality comes and is able to preach the Word of God, there are times when we listen.  We are no different from the people of the time of Moses!  We need prophets when we don’t listen to God.  We need also to listen to God’s words about false prophets—for they will die!

The Gospel brings us back again to this them of listening to the Lord.  The people in the Gospel are totally amazed at Jesus and his power over unclean spirits.  They could see that Jesus spoke as a person having authority on His own.  But did the people of the Gospel follow the Lord?  Not always!  Even when the Word of God is right in front of us, we are still able to resist.  God has given us this freedom to choose and so often we choose against God and thus also against ourselves.

Let us pay attention today to the many ways that God comes into our lives.  Let us seek to be faithful to the voice of the Lord as it comes to us in Scripture and in the Church.  Let us pay attention to the things of God and rejoice when God sends us the strength to be faithful.

 Fr. Terry