4th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
January 30, 2022

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

In these early days of the liturgical year, our Sunday Gospel readings are introducing us to the life of Jesus Christ, helping us to see — who he is and what he came to do.

As we remember, we began several weeks ago, hearing about his baptism in the Jordan River. On that day, as we heard, Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, and a voice from heaven declared that he was God’s beloved Son.²

Then last Sunday, we heard the first part of the story of his preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth. And as we recall, Jesus said he was “anointed” to proclaim the Gospel.³

Now this week, our Gospel continues the story.

At first, as we just heard, the people were “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”

But then something happened. They suddenly seem jealous and offended. Jesus notices it. And then he says: “No prophet is accepted in his own native place.”

The people question Jesus, as we heard. They said: “They also asked, ‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph?’”

So they knew that Jesus was one of them, but at the same time they could not understand that he was God’s beloved Son. There was something about him — something different about him.

And I was reflecting on this passage of the Gospel and I was thinking that there is something in our Christian life.

Every one of us has his own story, her own story, where we came from. But there is much more to our story. We belong to God!

What God says to the prophet Jeremiah in today’s first reading, he says to each one of us: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.”

The truth about our lives is that from before we are born, we given a vocation, a part to play in the great plan of salvation of the living God. This is true for every one of us.

By our baptism, we become a beloved son or daughter of God.

So our baptism gives us our true identity. We are God’s children now! And our identity gives us a mission.

By our baptism we are anointed with the Holy Spirit, and we are “appointed” to be missionary disciples.

The saints teach us that we must imitate the life of Christ in our own life. This is why Jesus came down from heaven. He came to share in our humanity, our human life — so that we can live our lives through him, with him, and in him.

So God is calling each of us to give our lives to him — to follow Jesus and to proclaim his Gospel.

So yes, our lives have a great significance. They are very special.

I was also thinking how the apostles and the first generations of the Church — they understood that they were called to live and share the beautiful mystery of the life and teachings of the Lord Jesus.

Some of them were set apart for special service to God, like priests and religious. The vast majority continued in their ordinary lives. They lived and worked and raised their families, right alongside their neighbors. 

So we can understand and see how the first Christians lived “in” the world. But they were not “of” this world.⁴ They understood that their baptism made them different. And so should we, my dear brothers and sisters.

There is a powerful letter from the early second century of the Church. It says, it’s beautiful: “What the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world."⁵

This is how we carry out our mission, our calling to be children of God. As Catholics, we are called to be the “soul” of every circumstance that we find ourselves in.

As St. Josemaría said in one of his homilies: “God is calling you to serve him in and from the ordinary, material, and secular activities of human life.”⁶

Right there where we are, we are called to be missionary disciples, Catholics. We are called to be disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

And as we do that, as St. Paul tells us today, that that happens by love. Love is the meaning and the measure of our lives as Catholics, as followers of Jesus.

Love, as Paul tells us, is often hidden. It works behind the scenes. Love is humble, it “does not seek its own interests,” he says.

Love is always in the service of the higher cause of the Gospel, of proclaiming the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ.

But we show our love in little ways — by our patience, our kindness, our hopefulness; by the way we endure difficulties. And we love — right where we are. Wherever we find ourselves.

So just as Jesus came back home to Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry, we are called to proclaim the Gospel in our homes and neighborhoods, among our friends and neighbors.

And we do that by way we love in the little things of our daily lives. This is how we live our vocation. This is how we live out our anointing as children of God and our call to be apostles in the world.

It’s beautiful, I think, to reflect on what we contemplate in the readings of Gospel and in Sacred Scripture should be made reality in our daily lives. We do think about it and pray about it, because it makes a big difference in our lives and obviously in the life of our family and our society.

We are the soul of the world.

So my dear brothers and sisters, let us ask for the grace this week to be like the first Christians, bringing the love of Jesus into relationships and into every encounter in our lives.

And let us ask our Blessed Mother Mary to help us to continue to grow in the image of her Son, as children of God — living according to his words and seeking his will in everything we do.