Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

All today’s  readings deal with the obligation we have to preach the Word of God.  Jeremiah, one of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, firmly believed he had been chosen by God to be His “go between” when the people were off track.  The responsorial psalm is a prayer Jeremiah would have prayed with all his soul’s passion during his many trials and exiles. In the second reading St Paul warned the Corinthians that all prophetic utterances or actions must be underpinned by love and finally, in the Gospel, we hear that  Jesus warned of the ultimate feeling of rejection that can be the lot of the prophet not accepted by his own people.

Following in the footsteps of St Dominic, we have been chosen by God, just as Jeremiah was, to be preachers of His Word.  We proudly wear our title of Order of Preachers, so we must “brace ourselves for action”.  Of course we don’t have  to look back as far as Jeremiah if we wish to see  just how “braced for action” God can expect us to be.  We all know people who have responded to challenges that seem to us to be insurmountable.  On 6 Feb. 1977, four Dominican Sisters together with three Jesuits in an unknown little place, St Paul’s Mission, Masumi, in Zimbabwe were mowed down by machine guns.  They had preached God’s incomprehensible love by their joyful and dedicated way of teaching youngsters, encouraging their patients as nurses or inspiring young adults in the teacher training college.  They believed, with the psalmist, and as we must, that God was their Rock.

“Be ambitious for the higher gifts”.  Is this St Paul urging us on, or is he warning us about being self satisfied?  We’ve given time and energy to helping the refugee;  we’ve been generous towards the poor and needy but, he declares, unless our driving motive has been love of those we are helping, we are simply a “gong booming or a cymbal clashing”.  If we are really honest we’ll ask ourselves are we acting like the Pharisee or the Publican?

Finally we must face the fact that our offer of help may be rejected, even when we know there is a crying need, for the reality remains that not every prophet is accepted in her own country.  The TRUTH , however is the one gift that will ultimately set people free in spite of opposition.