Thứ Bảy, 24 tháng 1, 2026

JANUARY 25, 2026 : THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

January 25, 2026

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 67

Reading 1

First the Lord degraded the land of Zebulun
and the land of Naphtali;
but in the end he has glorified the seaward road,
the land west of the Jordan,
the District of the Gentiles.

Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness:
for there is no gloom where but now there was distress.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14

R. (1a) The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
One thing I ask of the LORD;
this I seek:
To dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD
and contemplate his temple.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Reading 2

1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17

I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree in what you say,
and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.
For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters,
by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.
I mean that each of you is saying,
“I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,”
or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel,
and not with the wisdom of human eloquence,
so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.

Alleluia

Matthew 4:23

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the kingdom
and cured every disease among the people.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel

Matthew 4:12-23 or 4:12-17

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew to Galilee.
He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea,
in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali,
that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet
might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew,
casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
He said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers,
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father
and followed him.
He went around all of Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness among the people.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012526.cfm

Commentary on Isaiah 8:23 – 9:3; 1 Corinthians 1:10-13,17; Matthew 4:12-23

There are three distinct parts in today’s Gospel reading:

Jesus, the light of the nations and the fulfilment of Hebrew Testament prophecies;
a call to total conversion, to live in that light;
early responses to the call.

After the arrest of John the Baptist, Jesus moves up north to Galilee. It is his home province. It is where he will begin his public life.

John’s arrest
A note about John’s arrest—the verb in the original Greek is paradidomi, which literally means to “hand over”. This is a theme word, a refrain, which goes right through the Gospel:

John the Baptist was handed over—and executed (by King Herod);
Jesus was handed over—and executed (by both Jews and Gentiles—he died for all);
Many of Jesus’ disciples were handed over—and some were executed (mainly by Gentiles).

And this ‘handing over’ has been happening to disciples ever since, down to our own day. Paradoxically, persecution can always be the expected result of living the gospel of truth and love.

At the consecration during every Eucharist, the celebrant says:

Take this all of you and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.

“Given up” is perhaps a less than ideal translation of the Latin tradetur which means “will be handed over” and is the Latin equivalent of the Greek verb paradidomi. So, in the Eucharist, the Body of Christ is also ‘handed over’ to us. And we, in turn, collectively as the Body of Christ in the Christian community, are expected to continue that handing over of ourselves in the service of the gospel and the promotion of the Kingdom.

Galilee
Matthew says that Jesus left his home town of Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum, a town in Galilee, which, he tells us, is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, “in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali”. This reminds the evangelist of a prophecy from Isaiah, which Matthew now sees being fulfilled.

At this time, Galilee did not seem an obvious choice for the Messiah’s mission. It was regarded as a ‘remote’ province (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”, Nathanael asked with some surprise and cynicism in John 1:46). It was a rebellious region where even Jews were not noted for their observance of the Law.

Yet the prophecy suggests that the Light of the World is to be found in Galilee. Galilee, of all places, is to be the light of the nations? Not for nothing do we speak of a ‘God of surprises’!

But it is precisely in this Galilean town of Capernaum that Jesus, the Messiah, begins his mission. His ‘preaching’ is summed up in one deceptively simple sentence:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

‘Preaching’ would be better translated ‘proclaiming’, making an announcement of Good News.

Good News
What is this ‘good news’? The Greek, eu-angelion, from which comes the Latin evangelium, is translated into modern English as “gospel”. This is a variant of the earlier ‘God-Spel’ or ‘good news’.

And what is this good news? The Good News is that the “kingdom of Heaven” is near. ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ can be a very misleading term. To many, it may be identified with ‘heaven’, the ‘place up there’ where we hope to go to after death…if we have behaved ourselves.

In fact, it is important to be aware that the term in this context has far less to do with a future life than with our life here in this world. The other Gospels speak more directly of the “kingdom of God” which, in fact, is what Matthew also means. However, Matthew’s Gospel was written for a Christian community consisting primarily of converted Jews. In their tradition, they were very reluctant ever to use the name of God directly, and so Matthew throughout his Gospel speaks of God in indirect ways. One way is to use the term “heaven”, or to use the passive voice of a verb. For example, Matthew writes:

…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
(Matt 16:19)

He does not say by whom they will be bound or loosed, but it is clearly understood to be by God.

Again, ‘kingdom’ for us suggests the territory ruled over by a king. The Greek word the evangelists use is basileia from the word basileus, which means a ‘king’. But basileia is better translated as ‘rule’, ‘reign’ or ‘kingship’. It indicates the power of being a king rather than the place over which one is king. To be ‘in the Kingdom’, then, is not to be in a particular place, either in this life or the next. Rather it is to be living one’s life—wherever we are—under the loving power of God. It is to be in a relationship of loving submission to one’s God and Lord and to be in an environment where values like truth, love, compassion, justice, freedom, commmunity, and peace all prevail.

Repent!
The way to enter that relationship is, in Jesus’ words, to “repent”. This is the response to Jesus’ call. ‘Repent’ usually means to be sorry for, to regret some wrong actions we have done in the past. Jesus, however, is asking for much more than that. It is a call, not to wipe out the past, which is really not possible, but for us to change direction from now on and into the future. The Greek word which is rendered by many translations as ‘repent’ is metanoia. This word implies a radical change in one’s thinking; it means looking at life in a completely new way, making what is now sometimes called a ‘paradigm shift’. This new way of seeing life is spelt out through the whole of the Christian Testament.

It is only when we begin to make this radical change that we begin to become part of that Kingdom, that we begin effectively to come under the influence of God’s power in our lives. We begin to see things the way God sees them, and our behaviour changes accordingly.

The call is not just to be sorry for past sins, and not to do them any more. There has to be a complete change of direction, a deep involvement in doing God’s work. That work involves working with others for an end to poverty and destitution, to hunger and joblessness, to communal and religious hatred, to rampant greed, ambition and shameless consumerism, and to create a world of love and care—the special attributes of God. The Kingdom has not yet arrived. There is still much to be done—right here where we live.

This is a message not just for Catholics or Christians, but for people everywhere. The Kingdom goes far beyond the boundaries of the Church, and the Kingdom is being realised in many ways in places where Christianity has yet to penetrate. A majority of the world’s population does not know the gospel of Jesus, but that does not mean that the values of the Kingdom are absent. We must learn not to see Christianity or Catholicism in sectarian terms—‘them’ and ‘us’. The message of Jesus is a vision of life for all humanity and should be communicated as such.

First partners
After his preaching, Jesus finds the first partners for his work. They are not Pharisees or scribes, not scholars or influential members of the community, but fishermen, who may have been quite illiterate in the sense that they could not read or write. However, they may well have been steeped in the oral tradition of their Jewish faith, knowing their Hebrew Testament much better than most of us know our New Testament!

It is significant that the call takes place right in their working place. The initiative for the call comes from Jesus. As John writes in his Gospel:

You did not choose me, but I chose you. (John 15:16)

For them it means a metanoia, a complete break in their lifestyle. There is a complete letting go.

And after this call:

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

They put their total trust in Jesus, leaving behind their only means of livelihood, not knowing where it would all lead. Jesus himself had already taken this step in leaving Nazareth, his family and his livelihood as a carpenter. From now on their life would consist, not in worrying what they could get and keep, but in service to their brothers and sisters, especially those in greatest need.

At the same time, there is no evidence that they lived in destitution or want. Leaving the tools of the only way of life they had known was to choose to lead a simple lifestyle, i.e. only having those things necessary for their sustenance and their work, the new work Jesus was calling them to do.

Their security now came from the new lifestyle they were inaugurating, life in a mutually supporting community, where the needs of each one were taken care of. This, in effect, brought a life of greater material, emotional and social security than is found in our individualistic, competitive, rat-race style of survival.

One great family
They separated from their families, not because they did not love them, but because, as disciples of Jesus, they realised they belonged to a much larger family. They were learning not only to love their own, but to love especially all who were in need of love, care and compassion.

In the beginning, their first concern may be family members (early on, Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law), but later on they will give priority to those in greater need, non-family members, foreigners, total strangers, even enemies. To follow Jesus is to belong to a much bigger family.

In the Second Reading, too, Paul warns against divisions in the Christian family. It seems that the Christians in Corinth were dividing into factions and identifying themselves with various community leaders. Paul writes:

What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas”…

It is clear that such divisions are harmful. All disciples can only be for one person, the One who suffered, died and rose for them, the One in whose name all of them were baptised—Jesus their Lord.

We have, unfortunately, many such divisions among Christians today—“I am a Catholic”, “I am an Anglican… a Lutheran… a Methodist… a Presbyterian…” The list, alas, is endless. This is not the kind of family that Jesus intended. Such a dysfunctional family is not in a good position to give effective witness to the Good News of truth and love and fellowship which Jesus prayed for at the Last Supper (John 17).

Today’s call is asking us not just to fit Jesus into our chosen way of living, but to fit ourselves into his vision of life. In doing so, we are not making a sacrifice. Rather, we are on to a sure winner where we can only gain.

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Sunday, January 25, 2026

Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

Opening Prayer

In the darkness of a starless night, a night of no sense, you, the Word of life,

like lightning in the storm of forgetfulness, entered within the bounds of doubt under cover of the limits of precariousness to hide the light. Words made of silence and of the ordinary, your human words, heralds of the secrets of the Most High: like hooks cast into the waters of death

to find man once more, immersed in his anxious follies, and reclaim him, plundered, through the attractive radiance of forgiveness. To you, Ocean of Peace and shadow of eternal Glory, I render thanks:

Calm waters on my shore that awaits the wave, I wish to seek you! And may the friendship of the brothers protect me when night falls on my desire for you. Amen.

The Gospel Text - Matthew 4: 12-23

12 Hearing that John had been arrested he withdrew to Galilee, 13 and leaving

Nazareth he went and settled in Capernaum, beside the lake, on the borders of

Zebulon and Naphtali. 14 This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: 15 Land of Zebulon! Land of Naphtali! Way of the sea beyond Jordan. Galilee of the nations! 16 The people that lived in darkness have seen a great light; on those who lived in a country of shadow dark as death a light has dawned. 17 From then onwards Jesus began his proclamation with the message, 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.' 18 As he was walking by the Lake of

Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew; they were making a cast into the lake with their net, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, 'Come after me and I will make you fishers of people.' 20 And at once they left their nets and followed him. 21 Going on from there he saw another pair of brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John; they were in their boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 And at once, leaving the boat and their father, they followed him. 23 He went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing all kinds of disease and illness among the people.

A Moment of Silence:

Let us allow the voice of the Word to resonate within us.

Questions for reflection:

• Jesus settled by the sea: the Son of God settled beside human beings. The sea, this mysterious and boundless world, as immense in its horizon as the heavens are; the one reflected in the other, bordering on each other, distinct, a mutual reflection of calm and peace. Jesus, land of God, comes to live by the sea and becomes land of humankind. Shall we go and live beside God as the Word was before he came to us? Or is our fragile life in the flesh sufficient for us?

• The people that lived in darkness has seen a great light: immersed in darkness, men and women live their days in resigned pain and without the hope of anything changing for them. The world where faith is denied is a world immersed in darkness until light comes into it. Christ, the light of nations, has come into the world and darkness has dissipated so that the light might shine. Has the darkness within us dissipated?

• They left their nets at once and followed him. At once. Left. Followed. Difficult words for our way of life. To respond to God: yes, but calmly. To leave whatever we are doing for the Lord: yes, but first we must think well. How would it be if we did as the Apostles did: at once, left everything, followed Him?

A Key to the Reading:

The God of the universe who created heaven and earth with his Word alone, leaves his dwelling place and comes to live beside the sea in a foreign land, to speak the language of earth so that heaven may be made known. The Son of man, too, the master from Nazareth, leaves the home of his youth to go to the Galilee of the peoples beyond the Jordan. The darkness of ignorance that flickers across the centuries is pierced by a great light. The shadows of death hear words that open new ways and new life: «Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.» To change itinerary, to come close to the light is not something strange for those who are familiar with the presence of the Most High. Because the eyes get used to the presence and the human heart easily forgets the past darkness when it is enjoying splendor. Repent. How? Human relationship becomes the new way along the seashore. There are brothers along the shore, pairs of brothers: Simon and Andrew, James, and John. God does not come to break these relationships but takes them up so as to fish in a new more shining life, in his life and his sea.

As he was walking… The way is a great secret of the spiritual life. We are not called to stand still, but for us also to go by the sea, the sea of the world where people are the fish, immersed in bitter, salty and inhuman waters. Fishers of men. One cannot fish without the net of love, without a father who guards the boat, without a boat to launch into the deep. The net of human relationships is the only possible weapon of evangelizers, because with love we can go on a great fishing expedition, and love must not only be proclaimed but brought. To be called in pairs means precisely this bringing of a visible, concrete love, the love of brothers who enjoy the same parents, the love in whose veins flows the same blood, the same life.

Follow me… to call others to walk, fish and witness. The nets break, but every fisherman is capable of repairing a broken net. Love is not a knick-knack that is broken with use! The art of accommodation makes precious every possible relationship among people. What matters is going, trusting in that new name, always and still called LIFE.

Those called, go and follow Jesus. But where does Jesus go? He walks all over Galilee, teaches in the synagogues, preaches the good news of the kingdom, heals all kinds of diseases and infirmities of the people. Every sea person, apostle of the Kingdom, will act like Jesus: will walk the ways of the world and stop in the marketplaces of people, will tell the good news of God and will take care of the sick and infirm, will make visible the concern of the Father for each one of his sons and daughters.

PRAYER (Is 43: 1-21)

Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by your name, you are mine.

Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up.

Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.

For I am Yahweh, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

Since I regard you as precious, since you are honored and I love you,

I therefore give people in exchange for you, and nations in return for your life.

Do not be afraid, for I am with you. You yourselves are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, and the servant whom I have chosen,

so that you may know and believe me and understand that it is I. I, I am Yahweh, and there is no other Saviour but me.

Thus says Yahweh, who made a way through the sea, a path in the raging waters,

No need to remember past events,

no need to think about what was done before. Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges; can you not see it?

Yes, I am making a road in the desert and rivers in wastelands. The people I have shaped for myself will broadcast my praises.

Contemplation

The waters of the sea that cover the earth, tell me of the flow of your life, Lord. When sky and sea blend at the horizon, it seems as if I am seeing all that you are being reloaded into our being. A flow that is a soft wave of presence and an unspeakable story of love, made up of names, events, ages, secrets, placid emotions and unforeseen troubles, a story made up of lights and grey times, of enthusiasms and calm drowsiness. This sea that is humanity invaded by your peace, contains words without end, the words of your Word who wanted profoundly to take on the vest of the sand of time. How many words on the shores and ocean beds that are silently gathered, if only I am disposed to listen, your words that the waves of life bring to shore and that are roads for navigators, ancient and new words, words never forgotten and words wrapped in mystery. Lord, may the waves of humanity not sweep me away, but may they become trails of communion for the fragile boat of my journey. May I learn from you to launch into the deep to fish in the dark nights of the human story, when the fish are more prone to allow themselves to be caught. At your word, my God, I will cast the nets, and when I bring the boats to shore, I will go on following the footsteps you have left on the shore of history, when you chose to clothe yourself with our muddy clothes.

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