Third Sunday In Ordinary Time, Year C: Using Your Top Three

Today is the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, now dedicated each year to promoting a love and knowledge of Scripture, it’s like our new annual “Bible Sunday” for Catholics.

We hear in the three-year cycle of Sunday Mass readings, plus the two-year cycle of daily Mass readings:

13.5 percent of the Old Testament (not counting the Responsorial Psalms);

89.8 percent of the Gospels, and

71.5 percent of the entire New Testament.1

Trent Horn from Catholic Answers illustrates how practicing Catholics already know the Bible:

The mailman knows the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St. and so if he needs to get the mail to them, he knows which streets to follow to get there. In the same way, Protestants who have a deep passion for understanding the Bible can cite a biblical passages exact chapter and verse.

Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible like kids know a neighborhood. They may not know the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St., but they do know the Johnsons live on the top of the hill next to the house with the old green fence and the barking dog. They can get you to the same place, but in a more indirect way.

Catholics know a lot of scripture even if they don’t remember everywhere it’s found in scripture.

Vatican II taught that the homily is part of the liturgy itself (SC, 52), thus, “it will not be able to carry the whole weight of the Church’s preaching (26). 2

That is perhaps why Saint John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter ON KEEPING THE LORD'S DAY HOLY, encourages us to pray and study the Sunday Readings during the week before Mass, and do any parish Bible study offerings, otherwise, he says “then it is difficult for the liturgical proclamation of the word of God alone to produce the fruit we might expect.”3

If we do reflect on Scripture, it will be like a living interpretive speech of our lives by the ongoing, active presence of the written tradition of the Bible.

Regarding scripture applied to our particular vocation and mission, it will be focused and to the point:

E.g., I read about this big conference where speaker after speaker lined up to speak on various topics. Finally, the last speaker of the evening stepped up to the mic. He said, “I have only ten minutes, I barely know where to start,” because I only have ten minutes.

From the back of the room, someone shouted, “Start at the ninth minute.” 4

Jesus’ homily only lasted one minute. He “was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found” only that passage in Second Isaiah that was applicable to him because that part was a hot text; it was universally recognized as a prophecy of the long-expected Messiah. But note that Jesus skipped the last line which is Isaiah 61:2 which says, “to proclaim a day of vengeance from our God.”

He skips that line because vengeance is not part of his message, he thus critiques and edits his own scriptures. It’s a deliberate suppression of a negative aspect of Isaiah’s message. This is good news: He is not changing God the Father’s mind about us; he was changing our mind our God—and thus about one another and what we are called to do.

We got to unroll God’s word in our life and skip, not the entirety of God’s word, but rather skip the less important things in our life so we can then complete our life mission by doing what we are anointed to do.

Find your anointed self by doing the Called & Gifted Online spiritual gifts inventory at the Catherine of Siena Institute. When you get the results of your spiritual gifts, focus on your top three which will be tied to scripture, the Catechism, and which saints had those charisms.

Mission is bound to charism, i.e. “I am not here to try and fix everything, just the things I am anointed for.”

And, mission is bound to baptism, which is the basis of lay ministry.

And our baptismal consecration is never separated from vocational mission.

Using your top three charisms is to find “purpose” within your vocation which is key to spiritual and psychological well-being, and when applied to your job outside the home: satisfaction and career success.

There is a charism of service.

E.g., In 1962, when President John F. Kennedy was visiting the NASA Space center, he noticed a janitor sweeping the hallway and asked him, “What do you do around here?” to his surprise, the janitor replied, “Well, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon.” This janitor found meaning in seeing himself as someone who was playing a role in the grand vision of sending a person to the moon.