Homily for Thursday
Week 1 of Ordinary Time
Jan. 15, 2026
1 Sam 4: 1-11
Ps 44: 10-11, 14-15, 24-25
Collect
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence,
N.R.
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| Ekuah at German-language Wikipedia |
“After
a fierce struggle, Israel was defeated” (1 Sam 4: 2).
The
books of Samuel and Kings continue the history of Israel narrated in Judges,
wherein the pattern is: Israel sins
against the Lord, suffers some kind of oppression, repents and calls upon the
Lord, and the Lord raises up a champion to rescue Israel.
In
these early chapters of 1 Samuel, Israel incurs guilt thru the sins of Eli’s
sons and Eli’s failure to correct their behavior; that’s detailed in ch.
2. Disaster follows, culminating in the
capture of the ark of the covenant.
Israel is utterly humiliated. O
Lord, “you go not forth with our armies; those who hated us plundered us at
will” (Ps 44: 10-11).
We
don’t adhere to what’s called the “prosperity gospel,” viz., that material
welfare surely follows from our faithfulness and virtuous lives. On the other hand, it’s observable that a
family or a society that’s not centered on God suffers from the effects of
their own selfishness and belief that “the real world is governed by strength,
governed by force, governed by power.”[1]
This
week’s collect proposes to us a wiser way.
We plead for the Lord’s “heavenly care,” for the wisdom to “see what
must be done” and the “strength to do what [we] have seen.” The strength and power of God is our path to
virtue and a happy community life—religious community or political community.
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