4Th Sunday in Ordinary Time (13 January 2021)
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4th Sunday In Ordinary Time (13 January 2021) “…But if a prophet presumes to speak in my name an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.’” (Dt 18:20) Catholics can become easily confused these days. The controversies of the world which divide the world have also come to divide the Church especially as Catholics are encouraged to put the political before the spiritual. The popular media sees this confusion and seeks to become our primary catechist. All the while messages to the faithful continue to vary from pulpit to pulpit. The Catechism has been set aside in many dioceses and parishes as the more progressive minds of the Church wait like patient spiders only to pick it up again at a later date to spin its sacred teaching with worldly revisions at a time that will draw less attention and less scandal because of our increasing confusion and apathy. In today’s first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy we read how the Israelites were afraid and confused by God’s divine manifestations. Thus God sent Moses to tell them that he will raise up for them one from their own kin (Jesus) to speak to them about his word. In our own time many fear what the Church will say to them when it speaks the moral truth and so they prefer to raise up from their own society those who oppose God’s word! The Israelites were fearful of being burned by the fire on God’s mountain. Today many are afraid of being burned by the fire of their own consciences. In the Book of Numbers it is written that Moses was the most humble of everyone on earth. This means he was the most malleable to be forged in the fire of God’s truth. Hence, we place on our bulletin cover for this 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time a work by the Roman painter Domenico Fetti entitled Moses Before the Burning Bush (courtesy Wikimedia Commons). Fetti was a Roman who travelled eventually to Venice where he died a year later. He is said to have been influenced by Peter Paul Rubens and we can see in the fire of the bush, the shadows on the face, the movement of the cloth, and the bristling hair of the goat the baroque vigor of Rubens. Yet, it is the tenebrism of Caravaggio, light emerging from darkness, which here has its greatest effect on Fetti. (We have brightened the image to make it more perceptible in print). Here we see Moses gazing into the fire of God to receive the word of God. He removes his sandals as a sign of his reverence. Near him is his shepherd’s staff which God will empower to free the Israelites from Egypt (Ex 4:2). The goat is a sign of the flock which Moses will shepherd out of captivity. Moses spoke the word of God as God commanded even at the risk of his life (Ex 17:4). Not many of us will be called to guide a nation, but we may be called to guide a family or a classroom or even a conversation. In each of these circumstances the Catholic is expected by God to act as his representative and to speak in his Holy Name. We must come to know and believe our faith, and to speak and live it humbly and honorably before all. .