FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
FIRST LESSON
Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Jeremiah, in the fortieth year of his ministry, tells his young assistant, Baruch, about his commissioning by the Lord. Earlier prophets, Samuel, Nathan, were political figures, not preachers and poets. But Jeremiah is commissioned to use words. True, a political function is not left out, for he is also told to rule nations; but the political is secondary. The commissioning reflects a profound change brought about by the Babylonian captivity and exile. Before the captivity, the center of the religion was the sacrificing cult. But the Jews returned from Babylon with a religion of words. Deprived of the Temple in captivity, they had collected and edited and tied together their best religious writings and produced for the first time a Scripture, the Torah (also called the Law or the Pentateuch), and they had formed new institutes for worship by means of these sacred words alone, the synagogues.
SECOND LESSON
I Corinthians 13:1-13
Today we hear Paul’s exceedingly beautiful Hymn to Love. It needs no comment.
© Arthur H. Cash