{"id":1997,"date":"2023-01-16T15:01:59","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T15:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/?p=1997"},"modified":"2022-12-07T15:25:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T15:25:52","slug":"reflection-22-january-2022-a-third-sunday-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/?p=1997","title":{"rendered":"Reflection 22 January  2022 (A) Third Sunday of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The Bible in Dialogue with Questions of the Day. <em>Reflection and Dialogue: <\/em><\/strong><em>Good beginnings; repentance, a change of mind, belief in the Gospel and in the Church.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Reflection. Repentance, change of\nmind, belief in the Gospel. <\/em>We are at the beginning of the Yearly Cycle in\nthe Sunday liturgy. The manner in which Jesus began his public ministry\nprovides material for our reflection. A new age had arrived, and with it the\ncoming of the kingdom of God for long awaited. Two basic states of soul are\ncalled for in this new situation: repentance and faith. In this context\nrepentance does not so much mean sorrow for sin as a change of mental attitude,\na change that will be in keeping with acceptance of Jesus and what belief in\nhis person and teaching implies, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The\nchance in question is not from political, or any other, form of opportunism,\nbut belief in the God of Israel who is now speaking through his Son to Israel\nand the wider world. Jesus had been anointed for this mission with the Spirit\nat his baptism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Dialogue with contemporary society: Human wisdom and Divine Wisdom. <\/em>In\npresent-day political society Jesus is held in high regard, with his concern\nfor the poor, the disadvantaged and the marginalized. This is all to the good.\nIn part it is connected with the understanding which a certain section of\nsociety, especially in Europe, had of itself from the philosophical movement of\nthe Enlightenment onwards, with emphasis on human progress without reference to\nGod or to Jesus as Son of God. But as Paul reminds us in today\u2019s reading, and\nas he will in the next few Sundays, the Gospel message is not understood\nthrough human wisdom, but through faith in Christ crucified, which is the\ndivine wisdom made manifest. The Cross must have a central place in the life of\nthe Church. This is a fundamental truth, worth remembering in any dialogue with\nmodern society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>(<\/em><\/strong><em>For reflections\non the Sunday and Feast Day&nbsp; readings <\/em>see Martin McNamara, <em>Sunday\nReadings with Matthew: Interpretations and Reflections<\/em>, Dublin, Veritas,\n2016)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible in Dialogue with Questions of the Day. Reflection and Dialogue: Good beginnings; repentance, a change of mind, belief in the Gospel and in the Church. Reflection. Repentance, change &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2012,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/2012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}