God Loves Us All
2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.”Ps. 40
Of course, God loves everyone, of any race and language, of any clumsiness and culture, and all sinners; He is love; He loves us even when we don’t deserve it, and that’s why He came to show us the path to eternal salvation. Despite us being sinners, Christ sacrificed Himself for all of us. He loved us to the extreme by giving His life to save us from death and take us with Him for all eternity. That’s why He comes and calls us to follow Him, despite our sin. He doesn’t call the capable; He empowers and gives His grace to those He calls.
He assumed our humanity to make us partakers of His divinity. He became the Son of Man to make us children of God. He elevated our dignity to a divine level that we neither understand nor fully value because it surpasses our knowledge and capacity. God loves us all, and that’s why He came to show us the way that leads to the Father, the path to regaining paradise; we lost it due to disobedience, and we regain it through obedience. We lost it due to sin, and we regain it by following the example of Mary and Jesus, following their values and teachings, seeking to do the will of God, as we say in the Lord’s Prayer.
Jesus wants to liberate all of us from sin because, even if people don’t want to acknowledge it and lose the sense of sin, God knows that it’s like a leprosy that separates us from Him and divine life. It robs us of spiritual health and life, preventing us from enjoying the fruits of His Spirit and true happiness. That’s why Jesus, in His immense love, invites us not to sin again, just as He forgave the sinful woman when everyone else condemned her.
As brothers and sisters in faith, we love all sinners. Christ told us that He didn’t come to call the righteous but sinners. We all need His mercy, and by receiving it, we become merciful like Him, capable of seeing our brothers and sisters with God’s love. God equips us to love and help our siblings, starting by accepting them as they are and where they are.
We have brothers at different levels of spiritual growth and therefore, different levels of sin. Some are still in kindergarten, just starting to learn about God, so we can’t expect much from them yet; it’s natural that they might be full of sin as they haven’t fully known Christ’s light and His healing love. Others might be in high school or even surpass us by far. We should all strive to help them grow and ascend another step on their respective spiritual journeys.
We don’t condemn anyone; only God sees the hearts. We love everyone, and that’s why we want to help them break free from sin and open themselves to divine grace, to the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies and can make us holy, thus healing our souls from sin. We never condemn sinners; on the contrary, we love them, and that’s why we want to bring them to Jesus, as only He removes the sin of the world; only He can give us the grace, strength, and motivation to want to follow Him and leave behind the life of sin that cannot make us happy. Only He can give us the true happiness that our souls need.
Readings for the Week
Sunday: 1 Sm 3:3b-10, 19/Ps 40:2, 4 7-8, 8-9,10 (8a, 9a)/ 1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20/Jn 1:35-42
Monday: 1 Sm 15:16-23/Ps 50:8-9, 16bc-17, 21 and 23/Mk 2:18-22
Tuesday: 1 Sm 16:1-13/Ps 89:20, 21-22, 27-28/Mk 2:23-28
Wednesday: 1 Sm 17:32-33, 37, 40-51/Ps 144:1b, 2, 9-10/Mk 3:1-6
Thursday: 1 Sm 18:6-9; 19:1-7/Ps 56:2-3, 9-10a, 10b-11, 12-13/Mk 3:7-12
Friday: 1 Sm 24:3-21/Ps 57:2, 3-4, 6 and 11/Mk 3:13-19
Saturday: 2 Sm 1:1-4, 11-12, 19, 23-27/Ps 80:2-3, 5-7/Mk 3:20-21
Next Sunday: Jon 3:1-5, 10/Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (4a)/1 Cor 7:29-31/Mk 1:14-20
Observances for the Week
Sunday: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Monday: Martin Luther King Day
Wednesday: St. Anthony, Abbot
Thursday: January 18-25 is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Saturday: St. Fabian, Pope and Martyr; St. Sebastian, Martyr
Next Sunday: 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time