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Reflections on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Greg Swiderski

The readings for
this Sunday:

Isaiah 8:23-9:3

1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17

Matthew 4: 12-23

I wish they would have had a poet on the staff when I prepared for ministry, and in particular, to help us appreciate the beautiful language of the scriptures. Writers like Isaiah used the imagination to invite us to hope. “Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness�" the creative, sacred writer reminds us.

Most of us have be captivated when a flock of birds take wing. I watched them while ice skating next to the lake at North Park. The Easter proclamation reminds us that this new fire and this brilliant candle pierce the dark.

Angere, to strangle, is the Latin root for anxiety. So, it seems that the authors of our language knew the sheer power of such feelings and experiences.

In the January 13 issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner, professor of journalism at the University of California and author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, reflects upon the recent presidential election. He illustrates how politicians manipulated fear to their own political advantage.

After 12/26/2005, we hear reports from southeast Asia because people live in utter terror of another tsunami. The sea from which so many made their livelihood had become a raging destroyer. Playful waves became the killer.

In western Pennsylvania, and along much of our beautiful Ohio River, many folks struggled as they saw rain fall and the river flood so soon again.

The liturgy seems to recognize the paralyzing power of such trauma. After the beautiful and familiar Lord’s Prayer, the presider says: “Deliver us….from every evil and grant us peace in our day…protect us from all anxiety while we wait in joyful hope.�" Deliver us from the strangling experiences which keep us from loving and living.

Evidently stress already existed among our earliest ancestors in faith. Paul acknowledges that people are choosing sides, causing division.

Unfortunately we see walls being built today by followers of the gospel. They want to define who is “in�" and who is “out�"; who is worthy of our sacraments and who is not.

Jesus can only be weeping. The gospel tells us that Jesus came to teach, proclaim, and cure. He built bridges; something which western Pennsylvanians cross all the time.

There is no getting away from treacherous and destructive experiences. We have each other to support and encourage us during those demanding, challenging times. Like Matthew’s magi, we travel together through the night following the star. We must go forward in eternal hope knowing that we have been called into the
wonderful, mysterious event of love.