From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (2026 January 25)

Jan 25 - Third Sunday OT

“Coherence is the martyrdom of our time.” 

For a Christian today to be faithful in word and deed to the principles of our Faith, a heroic degree of courage is needed. Such a Christian will find “no place to rest his head” in the world. Goldilocks eventually found a bed that fit her. But a coherent Christian in every age will find no ideology, political party, newspaper, pundit, or lawn sign offered by the world that fits just right. In one way or another, all will prove themselves too small, too hard, and too cold for the full stature of Christ. 

This is due, in part, because the Truth, the Catholic Faith, is a union of opposites, which it marvelously holds together not just in tension, but in harmony. It starts with the Cross, i.e. the intersection of the horizontal and the vertical, the human and the divine, truth and love, mercy and justice, mystery and revelation. The world, in contrast, knows not how to reconcile contraries. It always seeks to divide them; to separate, to reduce, to label, and to set against. And that just makes sense, because the prince of the world is the devil, whose name signifies “dividing” or “tearing apart.” Christ, in contrast, “reconciles all things in Himself” (Col 1:20). And those who are “in Christ,” as St. Paul says, share in the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18). 

In a world that demands we take a side, there is pressure to see things one-sidedly. But the coherent Christian must say with a Tolkien character, “I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side.” For “whoever is not with Christ is against Him” (cf. Mt 12:30). We are called, rather, to remain at Christ’s pierced side, even unto the Cross.

For example: as Catholics, we are called to render a reverential respect and ready obedience to civil authority. “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (Rom 13:1-2). David revered Saul, “the Lord’s anointed,” even while he fled from his deadly persecution. And Jesus obeyed “unto death.” Yet while it’s true that we must be ready to accept unjust treatment from authorities as part of God’s providential plan, we must also “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) when the two give contrary commands, and be ready “when they persecute you in one town, to flee to the next” (Mt 10:3) if such would better serve the spreading of the Gospel. Likewise, an active concern for “the orphan, the widow, and the stranger” has always been the bedrock of biblical ethics: “The foreigner who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev 19:34). Yet this “inclusive” principle is to be held in harmony with the “exclusive” as well: “drive out the wicked person from among you,” St. Paul enjoins the Corinthians, who are to excommunicate one of their own (1 Cor 5:13, cf. 1 Cor 5:5). 

How is one to harmonize all these various principles and bring them to bear on, say, the ongoing immigration situation? Surely, none in itself can be the last word. Most fearing deportation are unlikely to be any more wicked than you or I. And respect for those in authority by no means excludes the denunciation of their wrongs. Yet when Jesus gives a scathing denunciation of the religious authorities in Matt 23, He also says, “do whatever they tell you, but not what they do” (Mt 23:3). 

So with all these “words” in tension, and in a world of warring perceptions, what is a coherent Catholic to think and do? 

A first step would be to ensure our perspective and response are not simply those proposed by the unbelieving world. Yesterday a conservative commentator compared ICE to the national guard that Eisenhower employed to enforce the de-segregation of public schools in the face of local resistance, in the 1950s. And one neighbor here by the parish has a sign up saying, “ICE IS TRUMP’S GESTAPO.” Those two poles perfectly illustrate the gaping divide present in our culture today. But it’s not that the truth is “somewhere in the middle.” It’s that He is Jesus Christ.

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time