RE: 01.12.12~Readings for Sunday, January 112th-2012

Saint Max Bible Study meets at the back of the church in the Mother Cabrini Room Fridays 9AM to 10AM.. Please join us!

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Please mark your calendar! Friday, January 27th-2012 – Reception 6:30PM Film 7:00PM
“WHICH WAY HOME,”-award winning film will be shown in the St.MaxParish Center
FREE! This is a FREE event!!!
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Sponsored by the Saint Max Kolbe Church Peace & Justice Ministry

JANUARY 15, 2012
Second Sunday In Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 65
READING 1 1 SM 3:3B-10, 19
Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the LORD
where the ark of God was.
The LORD called to Samuel, who answered, "Here I am."
Samuel ran to Eli and said, "Here I am. You called me."
"I did not call you, " Eli said. "Go back to sleep."
So he went back to sleep.
Again the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli.
"Here I am, " he said. "You called me."
But Eli answered, "I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep."

At that time Samuel was not familiar with the LORD,
because the LORD had not revealed anything to him as yet.
The LORD called Samuel again, for the third time.
Getting up and going to Eli, he said, "Here I am. You called me."
Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth.
So he said to Samuel, "Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply,
Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening."
When Samuel went to sleep in his place,
the LORD came and revealed his presence,
calling out as before, "Samuel, Samuel!"
Samuel answered, "Speak, for your servant is listening."

Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him,
not permitting any word of his to be without effect.


RESPONSORIAL PSALM PS 40:2, 4, 7-8, 8-9, 10
R. (8a and 9a) Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
I have waited, waited for the LORD,
and he stooped toward me and heard my cry.
And he put a new song into my mouth,
a hymn to our God.
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
Sacrifice or offering you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Holocausts or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, "Behold I come."
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
"In the written scroll it is prescribed for me,
to do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!"
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
R. Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
READING 2 1 COR 6:13C-15A, 17-20
Brothers and sisters:
The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord,
and the Lord is for the body;
God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.
Avoid immorality.
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body,
but the immoral person sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
For you have been purchased at a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body.


GOSPEL JN 1:35-42
John was standing with two of his disciples,
and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said,
"Behold, the Lamb of God."
The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.
Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them,
"What are you looking for?"
They said to him, "Rabbi" - which translated means Teacher -,
"where are you staying?"
He said to them, "Come, and you will see."
So they went and saw where Jesus was staying,
and they stayed with him that day.
It was about four in the afternoon.
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter,
was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus.
He first found his own brother Simon and told him,
"We have found the Messiah" - which is translated Christ -.
Then he brought him to Jesus.
Jesus looked at him and said,
"You are Simon the son of John;
you will be called Cephas" - which is translated Peter.

SUNDAY READINGS - 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
FIRST READING: 1 Samuel 3:3-10;-19. Samuel was lying down within the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, lie down again." So he went and lay down. And the Lord called again, "Samuel!" And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I
And the Lord came and stood forth, calling as at other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for thy servant hears."
And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.
EXPLANATION: We have here the account of Samuel's vocation to take over the leadership of the Chosen People---to be Yahweh's prophet and visible representative among them. This was an office to be filled from the death of Eli until Saul was appointed king (c. 1050-1030). The call came while he was still a youth and he served under Eli at the shrine of Shiloh, where the Ark then was, until Eli died. He then became the official leader of the people until God told him to anoint Saul as king and satisfy the people's demand for a king. His birth was God's answer to the prayers of a devout mother who had been barren for years, hence the etymology of his name "I asked Yahweh for him" (1 Sm. 1: 20). His mother Hannah was so grateful to God that she dedicated him to serve in the shrine at Shiloh from an early age. It was during his early youth that he was given his special call, his "vocation," to take Eli's place.
Lying down...temple: He slept somewhere within the shrine very probably in order to re-light the temple lamp should it go out during the night.
the Lord called: Sometime during the night ("the lamp of God had not yet gone out"---it was extinguished at daylight), Samuel heard his name called. He thought Eli was calling him.
did not...Lord: The young boy had never heard the voice of Yahweh. He naturally thought the voice calling him was that of Eli, the only one with him in the precincts of the shrine. He had no expectation that Yahweh would speak to him.
again...time: Three distinct times he heard his name called and each time he promptly rose and went to Eli; obedience was one of his virtues! Eli said: When this call had come a third time Eli grasped its meaning. He told the young boy how to answer if called once more: "Speak Lord for thy servant hears." Samuel replied thus to the fourth call and the Lord then gave him a message for Eli and his own prophetic vocation.
Lord...him: The power of God was with Samuel, enabling him to become worthy of the office he was to hold.
words...ground: Because of this power of God, Samuel's judgements and decisions as leader of the people were true and solid--they did not fail, they were not proved false. Verse 20 (which is not in the reading) proves this: "All Israel from Dan to Beersheba came to know that Samuel was accredited as a prophet of Yahweh."
APPLICATION: God's ways are surely wonderful! He could govern and regulate this world and all its inhabitants most correctly and successfully all by himself. However, he has decided to give man a chance of co-operating with him in the running of the material and spiritual affairs of his world. Perhaps they are more often a hindrance rather than a help to the Lord. Yet, he not only allows them but he calls them, selects them for various roles in the government of his world.
This is true in the running of the temporal affairs as well as the government of the spiritual life of men on earth. The exercise of power over a nation or community of people is not from man but from God, hence the obligation on subjects to obey the just laws of their rulers. God it is who delegates his authority to earthly rulers.
During the first eight hundred years of God's dealings with his Chosen People, both the temporal and spiritual leadership of the people always resided in one and the same individual. The Patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, the Judges down to the appointment of kings (1030 B.C.), were individually called by God to administer both the temporal and spiritual affairs of the community. Today's lesson tells us how Samuel got his call to fulfill this double task of temporal and spiritual leadership of God's people. Because God was with him in all his doings he carried it out very successfully for about twenty years.
All men have a vocation, a call from God in this life. Each individual has duties to perform which, if faithfully carried out, will earn for him the place God has planned for him in the eternal kingdom. A few are called to be the leaders of their fellowman. The vast majority are called to follow the leaders by loyally obeying the laws enacted for their just government. Each one of us has a call from God, a part to play in the temporal and spiritual affairs of this life. The future status of each one of us will be determined by the manner in which we carried out our role on earth.
Samuel had not the faintest idea that it was God Who was speaking to him when he first got his call, his vocation, in the shrine at Shiloh. But when he eventually realized the truth he immediately offered his humble service to the Lord, "thy servant hears." How few of us have seen a call from God, a divine vocation, in the humdrum activities of our daily lives, and yet these ordinary daily tasks are the road to heaven that God has mapped out for us. These are the "vocations" he has given us. We may say that we ourselves chose our careers in life, we decided what occupation we should follow, but behind our free decisions the wise providence of God, working through parents, neighbors, circumstances of time and place, has so arranged our earthly journey that it would end for us in heaven. Many grumble at their role in life. They think their lot is so inferior and demanding when compared with the life others lead, and even go so far as to say that God could have no part in such a bad arrangement. Yet, God is in charge of his world. He chooses each individual for the role he is to carry to its successful conclusion.
"There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will," Shakespeare, the wise Christian tells us. God has a master plan for the human race; to each one of us he has given a little niche in that plan. If we play the part he has given us, let it be noble or humble in the eyes of this world, we shall make a success of God's master-plan, of this great human drama. Our own eternal success will be assured. With Samuel today, let us accept our vocation and humbly submit ourselves to his divine will: "speak Lord for thy servant hears."
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SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 6:13-15; 17-20. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
EXPLANATION: One of the most besetting sins of the pagan port-town of Corinth was fornication, or more precisely prostitution. Some of Paul's converts found the Christian obligation of chastity rather difficult, and, falling back on the ideas of their pagan days, ideas still prevalent among the pagans all around them, they tried to justify fornication as part of the Christian liberty which Paul had preached to them. In this letter, which Paul wrote from Ephesus to his Corinthian converts, he makes it crystal clear that such an interpretation of Christian liberty was wrong.
The body...immorality: These lax converts in Corinth tried to justify their sexual aberrations by saying that sex was a natural desire of the body, and within the Christian code that it should be lawful to satisfy such desires, just as was the bodily desire for food and drink. Paul's answer is an emphatic "no." In baptism the whole man, body as well as spirit, is dedicated and united to Christ. To unite such a body with an illicit partner, which happens in fornication (the use of sex in marriage is, of course, lawful) is a profanation of the union between Christ and the Christian in baptism and is therefore a sacrilege.
God...up: The union with Christ, established by baptism, will last forever. We shall die, but just as Christ was raised from the dead, so shall we too be raised by God, and so remain united with Christ forever.
bodies...Christ: Paul had taught them this truth: "do you not know," he says, "that your bodies are members of Christ?" As the human body is made up of many and different members, so the body of Christ---his visible Church on earth---is made of all the Christian people. But Paul goes further here and implies that each Christian forms "one flesh," as it were, with Christ: the union is corporal rather than corporate. Hence the malice of fornication.
becomes...with him: Christ has sent his Spirit on all the baptized; this will effect the spiritualization of their mortal bodies on the day of their resurrection.
every other sin...body: Although the body plays a part in other sins, for example, gluttony, sins against chastity (fornication and adultery) engage the body more than sins against other virtues. It is an abuse of the body; it separates it from the Lord to whom it was united in baptism.
temple...Spirit: Christian baptism confers the Holy Spirit. Every Christian thus becomes a temple of the Spirit---God dwells in a special way within him.
you...own: Christians belong to God. Through the incarnation and death of Christ they were made God's chosen ones, free men and heirs of heaven.
glorify God in your body: By preserving free from immorality their bodies, as temples pure and holy, fit abodes of the Holy Spirit, they should honor God and show their appreciation of his infinite goodness.
APPLICATION: St. Paul wrote these words almost two thousand years ago. Ninety per cent of the world's population was still pagan, knowing nothing of the true God or of his divine plans for them. The only practical philosophy they could and did follow was the enjoyment of every comfort and pleasure. They believed that when they died all was ended forever. St. Paul's converts in Corinth were living in the midst of pagans who practiced this philosophy. This made Christian living very difficult for some of them. They fell back into the immoral practices in which they had indulged before their conversion.
The Apostle, hearing of this, condemned their conduct in clear and forceful language. "Shun immorality"; "the body is not meant for immorality," he tells them. He then gives the reason why the use of sex, outside of marriage, is not only a sin but a sacrilege. In baptism the Christian has given his body to Christ. He has become a member of Christ, and therefore, such a body cannot be given to anyone but to a lawful spouse. To join the Christian body to a prostitute in fornication therefore, was a desecration of the sacred, a direct denial of the bond which bound the Christian to Christ. Furthermore, he reminds these immoral converts of a truth he had already told them, namely, that ever since their baptism the Holy Spirit dwelt within them---they were temples of God. They belonged in a very special way to God, for, through Christ, he had brought them out of slavery to be his own heirs for all eternity.
This teaching of St. Paul is, if anything, more necessary today than it was at that time in Corinth. The weak converts of Corinth had the bad example of their local pagan neighbors to contend with. They also had the good example of the majority of their fellow-converts to uplift and encourage them. Today we have to contend, not only with the bad example of local pagan or rather neo-pagan neighbors, but the full force of the world's immorality is blazoned daily before our eyes by the mass-media of television, papers, and scandal-mongering writers.
The campaign for absolute freedom for the individual, the demands of the permissive society, are being daily shouted from the house-tops with such insistence and constancy, that even devout Christians cannot entirely avoid their impact. Sex, or rather the abuse of it, has become the battle-cry of youth. Indeed, it has been raised to the status of a god whose every whim must be obeyed and satisfied. Pornography today has become a billion-dollar industry. As long as there is a demand for it suppliers will not be found wanting. If this sexual extravagance was the invention of the communist countries as a means of reducing the rest of the world to impotency, the democracies of the West would be immediately up in arms. But as it is their own brain-child, they have no word of condemnation for it. If they do not openly encourage it, they at least permit this social cancer to grow and propagate itself. They do not realize or perhaps do not care, that it will eventually corrupt their nations and make social life, and even human existence impossible.
But we Christians can and must stand up and oppose with every means in our power, this pagan immorality. Our bodies are members of Christ's sacred body. We must not desecrate them by indulging in sexual aberrations. We are temples of the Holy Spirit; sin must have no place within us. Parents of families: instruct your children by word and example. Protect them, as far as you can, from this immoral cancer which is being encouraged and developed all around you. Under the guise of liberty our permissive society is demanding more and more license to violate, not only the sacred laws of God himself, but the very nature of humanity. Human intelligence and reason are thrown overboard in the search for sexual pleasure, and man who was made "a little less than the angels" is now debased to the level of the beast of the field.
Listen to St. Paul's advice: "The body is not meant for immorality---it is meant to glorify God."
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GOSPEL: John 1: 35-42. John was standing with two of his disciples; and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them, "What do you seek?" And they said to him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).
EXPLANATION: For some months before Jesus came to him at the Jordan, John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing---preparing his fellow-Jews for the Messiah. As was the custom with the prophets and other holy men, disciples had come to join him. But the Baptist, who knew that his mission was a temporary one, encouraged these disciples to follow Jesus, as soon as he had learned from divine revelation (Jn. 1: 32-34) that Jesus was the promised Messiah. In today's extract from the fourth gospel, we see four of the Baptist's disciples. Three of them, Peter, James and John, were always among his closest and most privileged Apostles.
Behold...God: Calling Jesus the Lamb of God the Baptist points him out to two of his disciples. This title most probably refers to the suffering servant described in second-Isaiah (40-55). In Is. 53 :7-12, this servant of Yahweh is described as an innocent Lamb who is slaughtered for the sins of all the erring sheep : " taking their faults on himself." These servant poems in Isaiah were accepted as messianic, and the Baptist's disciples understand that their prophet is pointing out the Messiah to them.
they followed Jesus: They had come from Galilee thinking, as many other Jews did, that the Baptist himself was the Messiah. Now the Baptist has made it clear to all (Jn. 1: 19-34) that he is as nothing compared to the Messiah. From the Baptist's words, the two disciples understood that Jesus was the Messiah foretold by Isaiah. So they left John and followed Jesus.
what do you seek: He wants them to declare their reason for following him. come and see: Clearly, their reason was to know more about him, and so they hinted that they wished to live with him. He invites them to come along.
one...was Andrew: It is generally accepted that the other was the Evangelist. He never mentions his own name in his gospel, but speaks of the "beloved disciple" or the "son of Zebedee."
his brother Simon: Simon was at the Jordan and evidently was a disciple of the Baptist also. Andrew, who recognized Jesus as the Messiah, told Simon who then also came to follow him. The statement "he (Andrew) first found his brother" seems to imply that the other (John) found his brother (James) also and brought him to Jesus. In the synoptic gospels Peter, Andrew, James and John are the first four disciples to be called by Jesus (see Mk. I : 16-20).
you shall...Cephas: The Aramaic name, Cephas, means "rock." On his very first encounter with Simon, Jesus promises him that his name will be changed to "Rock," which means strength, solidity. A change of name among the Chosen People meant a change of position or function. This change of position or function took place later, when Simon was given the primacy of the Church. He was then made the Church's solid foundation on which it was to stand for all time (Mt.16: 18). He was to be the Rock (Petros or Peter=Cephas or Rock) on which Christ would build his Church.
APPLICATION: In the eight short verses read to us today from St. John's gospel we have an account of the vocation of the first four Apostles who followed Jesus. It was a momentous event in the history of salvation. It was the beginning of a stream of vocations that would grow and spread down through the ages until the end of the world. It was momentous, firstly, in that Christ, who had come to open heaven for all men and who could find means of bringing them all to that eternal home without help from any man, decided instead to let men co-operate with him in this divine task. He decreed to set up a kingdom in this world---his Church---which would be run by mere mortals for their fellow-mortals, but which would be under his protection and assisted by his divine aid until the end of time. Christ chose this very human way, in order to make his Church more acceptable to our limited, human understanding and more approachable for sinful, human nature.
Christ, as God, could deal directly with every human being on earth. He could teach the infallible truth; he could pardon sins; he could give all the graces needed to travel successfully to heaven. There would then be no need for a Church with its teaching magisterium, no need for the sacrament of initiation, baptism, or of reconciliation, penance, nor of the Holy Eucharist itself or of any other such aids. Christ could do all that his Church does for the salvation of mankind, and more successfully, of course, but yet he chose the way which divine wisdom saw was best.
We mortals know that God can speak directly to our hearts, and actually has done so to many men in the past. We know that he can do directly all that is done by his Church, to whom he gave the power, with its teaching magisterium and sacraments. If he were to act in this way we should be open to continuous doubts about the source of our inspirations and the objectivity of the graces we thought we were receiving. It was to remove such doubts, and the possibility of self-deception that Christ left to us the external visible kingdom to which he gave all the powers necessary for men's salvation. It was for the security and peace of men's consciences that he set up a visible Church founded on the Apostles, men like ourselves, but transformed by his assisting grace.
Another momentous fact in Christ's choice of the Apostles on whom he was to build his Church, is that he "chose the lowly and the humble to confound the wise." The first four Apostles, as well as the other eight, were simple, lowly fishermen from Galilee. They may possibly have been able to read and write a little, but they were certainly not men of education or any social standing in their communities. He could have converted and chosen some of the more highly educated scribes of Jerusalem, or some of the Roman centurions then in Palestine, or some of the many philosophers in Greece, or even Roman senators whose influence as Christian teachers would carry such weight with the educated elite of the empire. But he did not. The instrument he chose to carry his message to all men, was not dependent on human ingenuity or on the educational or social standing of his witnesses. Rather was it to stand on the power of God, of which it was the expression and proof.
We can see clearly the divine wisdom governing Christ's choice of Apostles! Had his message of salvation been spread and promulgated by men of learning and social standing, the cry would soon go up on all sides: "This religion is the invention of philosophers; it is a clever plan of the upper classes to keep the poor and humble workers in subjection." But it was the poor and working classes who spread Christ's message, and who suffered imprisonment and death itself at the hands of the educated and upper classes for so doing.
Today, let us thank our blessed Lord who provided so humanly and yet so divinely for our eternal welfare. In the Church, which he founded on the lowly but solid foundation of simple fishermen of Galilee, he erected an institution against which the gates of hell, the power of all the enemies of our salvation, cannot prevail, for his divine guidance and help will be with it forever. It has had enemies and opposition from the beginning; they may be more numerous and more destructive than ever, today. But the promise of Christ still holds good, his word cannot fail. Therefore, neither the opposition of materialistic enemies from without, nor the even more insidious attacks from faint-hearted and worldly-minded members from within, can affect the safety and permanence of the building which Christ built on the Rock. "If God is with us," it matters not "who is against us."-b079 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
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