Word of God Sunday Reflection: Scripture, Division, and the Call to Unity
Readings and Virtual Homily for January 25, 2026, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time; Another Sunny January
Readings for Mass this Sunday:
Isaiah 8:23 -- 9:3
Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14
1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17
Matthew 4:12-23
Dear Friends and Family,
A quick reminder that if you are interested in attending the Day of Reflection ("Women Saints of the Passion") next Saturday at St. Clement, you may RSVP with Lisa Fisher at lmf7544@gmail.com
Lisa would appreciate having the RSVP by Tuesday, January 27.
Midway through his pontificate, Pope Francis designated this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, a Sunday for reflection on and promotion of the Word of God. World Bible Sunday, we might call it (Francis did not so label it). It was stressed at the time, and has been stressed since, that the emphasis here is not one Sunday a year, but every Sunday of the year; Scripture, of course, being our very daily bread, one of our heaven-sent lifelines (the others being the sacraments and magisterial teaching).
The readings offer a variety of possibilities for a strong and deep homily, but one which I am going to avoid at the outset (because I have preached on it so often and most recently just three weeks ago at the Epiphany) is the theme of the conversion of the Gentiles. The first reading includes one of my favorite passages from the entire Bible, Isaiah 9:1, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." I could write a book on this theme, probably titling it The Joy of the Gentiles.
This is a homily, not a book, and I have written numerous homilies over the last several years, on precisely this theme. Another homiletic theme this week might be reflecting on the nature of vocational call, since the Gospel passage describes the call of several of the apostles. It is really important to talk and think about our vocations (we all have one) and it is important as well, to preach, now and then, on the need to send laborers into the vineyard; that is, now and again, I should preach on vocational call to the priesthood and religious life.
Another time.
What I want to focus on in this week's homily is the second reading; is Paul's admonition to the community at Corinth not to be dividing themselves up into factions. I want to focus, in other words, on Christian division and on prospects for overcoming those divisions. This focus is, in fact, one of the reasons Francis designated this Sunday the Sunday of the Scriptural Word (again, not precisely Francis' terms). Our separated brethren in most of the Protestant churches lay special emphasis on Scripture. And why not? Remember what I said above, Scripture is one of the lifelines we have to the divine realm. The other two, the sacraments and magisterial teaching, the Protestant Reformation largely did away with. A renewed Catholic emphasis on the importance of Scripture may be seen as ecumenical in nature and aim.
Paul admonishes the church at Corinth for dividing itself according to personality -- some of the believers claimed to be with Paul, some with Apollos, others with Peter and so on. Paul asks, rhetorically, "Has Christ been divided?" (vss. 12-13). At that time, of course, this WAS a rhetorical question. At various times since in the long history of Christianity, and of course, in our time today, this is NOT a rhetorical question. Christ has, indeed, been divided. Or at any rate, his self-proclaimed followers have been divided and...
This situation is problematic for several reasons, but one of them is the effectiveness of Christian witness in the world. One of the reasons the ecumenical movement developed, a century or so ago, is that missionaries in the Third World found themselves at cross-purposes with each other, in terms of the work of evangelization. A Catholic team would evangelize a region of let's say, central Africa, and be followed by a Baptist group who told the people not to believe in the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist.
This kind of thing could quickly lead to people in central Africa deciding not to believe anything the Christians were saying, since the Christians themselves were divided over what is true and what is not. Jesus recognized the importance of unity among his followers and prayed earnestly for it the night before he died (see John 17, the entire chapter.) Christian divisions can be, and no doubt have been, cited by non-believers as a reason to continue not to believe.
Despite the difficulties, of course, missionary outreach in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries achieved spectacular results; much of Africa, Asia and Oceania are Christian -- of one stripe or another -- today. Ecumenical dialogue seeks to underscore commonality of belief, while respecting areas of divergence. I remember giving a talk to an evangelical Protestant young adult group in Fremont, one spring evening, while I was assigned at Our Lady of Guadalupe. I no longer remember how the leaders of the group had heard of me, but they had, and what they had heard persuaded them that I would be a good bet to come and speak to the group about what Catholics and evangelical Christians have in common.
I remember that I took an historical approach, assuring the young people that what divides Christians today is nothing like what divided followers of Christ in the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Arian Heresy flourished to the extent that St. Augustine found himself bishop of a diocese (Hippo, in North Africa) that had more Arians than Catholics. The Arian teaching was that Jesus was not divine; merely the greatest of created beings. This sharp denial of both the doctrine of the Incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity, I pointed out to the young evangelicals, was a far more serious and substantive disagreement than anything that divides Christians today.
All the same, of course, we are divided today. And in several instances -- most significantly, I would argue, on the question of the Eucharist -- the disagreement is substantial. It is instructive to look at how Protestant understandings of the Eucharist developed in the first two or three generations of the Reformation. Martin Luther, who got the whole thing rolling, believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He modified the Catholic doctrine to argue that Christ became really present IN the elements of bread and wine.
This led to the formal definition of the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist at the Council of Trent (which met in several sessions from 1545 to 1563, precisely to counter Protestant arguments). The Church always believed that the elements were transformed; that though they maintained the appearance of bread and wine, there was a substantive change -- hence the word used to express the Catholic understanding: Transubstantiation. Martin Luther's modification may seem relatively innocuous, but it led to further and deeper denials of the Catholic belief.
John Calvin, from whom the Presbyterians trace their lineage, argued for a spiritual presence of Christ only, in the Eucharist. The bread and wine were not transformed, nor were they mixed, accommodating a physical presence of Christ while retaining their reality as bread and wine (the Lutheran doctrine, which came to be called Consubstantiation). Christ became spiritually present in the Eucharist in some vague but definite way, Calvin argued; it was a presence more substantial than simply encountering the Lord in prayer.
From this understanding the so-called radical reformers, such as Zwingli and Knox, argued that there was neither a physical nor a special spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. When Jesus said "Do this in memory of me," that was all he meant. Get together and share the Eucharistic meal as a memorial of the Last Supper. It is no more than that. This is the belief of most Protestant Christians today; the Lutherans and the Anglicans (some of them anyway!) are exceptions.
How Christians divided over so central and substantive a doctrine as the Real Presence can find common ground -- on that doctrine, I mean -- is one of the conundrums of the ecumenical movement. There are several other areas of substantive disagreement, as well -- Purgatory, for instance; the communion of saints; veneration of Mary; the sacraments themselves (beyond baptism); the apostolic succession and Church governance and more.
In the end, several Catholic mystics have assured us, God has a plan to reunite Christians. It will be the result of a miracle of the Holy Spirit, not the result of human effort. That said, the ecumenical movement is to be credited with breaking down barriers between Christians and bringing us together in that wide variety of ways that we can, in fact, come together, to work, minister and pray for the salvation of the world.
So...don't get me wrong. I love living in a part of the country where no one thinks twice about having the windows open in January. I am a cold-weather wimp; as cold as it gets here in the Bay Area (it is "freezing" when the afternoon highs only reach the mid-fifties) that is as cold as I like it ever to get. And while I am actually a big fan of our winter rains -- that is the case only when I am inside and can watch the rain in comfort.
I was in London and Paris at the end of the year, when it was raining cats and dogs here. I read just this past week that for the first time in twenty-five years ALL of California is out of drought status...God be praised. Many prayers answered.
All the same, I think we need to be praying for rain this winter. We've gone over two weeks without it and there's a whole lot of sun in the current forecast. As I have mentioned before, I have something like PTSD from the 2019-22 drought. Last January was one of the driest on record, but the winter overall was wet. Hoping and praying that pattern will repeat itself this year.
Take good care. God bless.
Love,
Fr. Brawn