17 January 2027 · Latin Rite
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“He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.” John 1:39
After the Epiphany and the Baptism, the first Sundays of Ordinary Time show how people come to Jesus. John the Baptist sees Jesus walk by and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” Two of his disciples follow. Jesus turns and asks the first question he speaks in John's Gospel: “What are you looking for?” They answer with another question: “Rabbi… where are you staying?” And he says: “Come and see.” They stay with him that day; John even remembers the hour, “about four o'clock in the afternoon”. An encounter with Jesus is never forgotten.
Andrew immediately finds his brother Simon: “We have found the Messiah.” He brings him to Jesus, who looks at him and gives him a new name: “You are to be called Cephas”, Peter, rock. Faith spreads from person to person, brother to brother. The first reading shows the boy Samuel learning to recognise God's call, thanks to old Eli: “Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.” Every vocation needs someone who helps us hear.
St Paul reminds the Corinthians that this following involves the whole person: “your bodies are members of Christ… your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit… glorify God in your body.” Discipleship is not only ideas; it is where we go, what we do with our bodies, whom we stay with. The Psalm puts the answer on our lips: “Here I am… I delight to do your will.”
Theme: “What are you looking for?… Come and see.”
How disciples are called: listening, seeking, staying, bringing others.
“Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”” 1 Samuel 3:10
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27
Apply: Begin your prayer each day with: Speak, Lord.
“When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart,” Jeremiah 29:13
“When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?”” John 1:38
Apply: Write down what you are really looking for and pray about it.
“O taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.” Psalm 34:8
“He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.” John 1:39
Apply: Spend fifteen minutes with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament this week.
“I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD.” Psalm 40:9
“He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed).” John 1:41
Apply: Invite one person to Mass or a prayer group.
Every disciple begins with a question and an invitation.
Come and see, stay, and bring someone else.
Take-home resolution: Be an Andrew this week: bring one person closer to Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel today shows us how the first disciples came to Jesus. John the Baptist sees Jesus walking by and says: look, here is the Lamb of God! Two of his disciples hear and follow Jesus.
Jesus turns and asks them: what are you looking for? (John 1:38). These are his first words in John's Gospel, and he asks each of us the same question. What are you really looking for? Money, success, love, peace? Behind all our desires is a longing for God.
They answer: Rabbi, where are you staying? And Jesus says: come and see. They went and stayed with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon (John 1:39). Decades later John still remembered the hour. A real encounter with Jesus changes a life.
Then Andrew finds his brother Simon and says: we have found the Messiah. He brings him to Jesus, who looks at him and gives him a new name, Peter, the rock (John 1:41–42). Faith spreads from person to person.
In the first reading the boy Samuel hears his name called three times and does not understand. Old Eli helps him: say, speak, LORD, for your servant is listening (1 Samuel 3:9). We all need an Eli to help us hear God, and we can be an Eli for someone else.
St Paul reminds us that our bodies are members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit. Following Jesus involves the whole of us. This week let us answer Jesus' question honestly, spend time staying with him, and invite one person to come and see. Amen.
Children, Jesus asked two friends: what are you looking for? Then he said: come and see! They stayed with him all afternoon and became his friends.
Andrew brought his brother to Jesus. Who can you bring to church or to pray with you?
Almighty ever-living God, who govern all things, both in heaven and on earth, mercifully hear the pleading of your people and bestow your peace on our times. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Christmas is over and the Baptism of the Lord has closed the season. On this first Sunday of green vestments the Church asks a plain question: how does a person come to know God? All the readings answer it in terms of hearing, following and belonging. A boy in the sanctuary at Shiloh keeps running to the wrong person until an old priest teaches him to say, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” The psalm answers with the same readiness: “Here I am.” Two disciples at the Jordan hear John’s word about the Lamb of God, follow Jesus, and are asked what they are looking for.
Between them St Paul reminds the Corinthians that this call claims the whole person: “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” God’s call comes through other people, Eli for Samuel, John for the disciples, Andrew for his brother. And it does not stay in the mind. The key words are listen, come and see and body.
Setting.
The First Book of Samuel tells how Israel passed from the time of the judges to the time of the kings. Samuel stands on the bridge between them. He is the son of Hannah, who prayed for a child in her barrenness and gave him back to the Lord (1 Samuel 1). He serves as a boy at the sanctuary of Shiloh, where the ark of the covenant was kept, under the old priest Eli.
The sanctuary is in a bad state. Eli’s sons abuse their office (2:12–17), and Eli does not restrain them (3:13). The chapter opens with a sad note: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread” (3:1). Into that silence, God speaks to a child.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.” (3:3)
The lamp burned through the night (Exodus 27:20–21), so the hour is before dawn. The narrator may also mean more than the time: the old order is growing dark, but God’s light has not gone out.
“Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (3:7)
This verse explains why he keeps going to Eli. It also comforts us. A person can be faithful, and close to holy things, and still be waiting for the moment when it becomes personal.
“Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.” (3:8)
Eli has failed as a father and as a priest, and his eyes are dim. Yet he has one thing left to give, and he gives it honestly: he points the boy away from himself toward God, even though he must suspect what God may say about his house. Often God’s call needs a human helper who can recognize it.
“‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” (3:9)
This is the prayer Eli teaches. It is one of the best short prayers in the Bible, and it is a prayer of listening, not of asking.
“Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”” (3:10)
The boy leaves out the word “Lord”, both in the NRSV and in the POC. Perhaps he does not yet dare to say it. The text does not explain.
“As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.” (3:19)
Words that fall to the ground are words that come to nothing. The one who listened to God’s word now speaks a word that God keeps. The silence of v. 1 is broken.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism uses this very scene in teaching about prayer: the child Samuel must have learned from his mother Hannah how to stand before the Lord, and from the priest Eli how to listen to his word, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (CCC 2578). The Church also sees here how a vocation is usually discerned: a person hears something he cannot yet name, and someone wiser helps him to name it.
Setting.
Paul wrote this letter from Ephesus (16:8), probably about the middle of the fifties, to a young Church he had founded. Corinth was a busy port city and a Roman colony. Some of the believers there held that because they had received the Spirit, what they did with their bodies no longer mattered.
Just before our reading Paul quotes what many scholars think were their own slogans: “All things are lawful for me” and “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” (6:12–13). The reasoning seems to have gone like this: as food is for the stomach, so sex is for the body, and both are passing away. Paul’s answer takes the body seriously because God does.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (6:13)
The second half is the surprise. It is easy to say that the body is for the Lord; Paul also says the Lord is for the body. Christ does not save only souls.
“But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” (6:17)
The verb means to be closely joined, the language of Genesis 2:24, which Paul has just quoted in v. 16. No union with Christ leaves the body outside it.
“Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.” (6:18)
This is a hard saying, since other sins too involve the body. Some scholars think the first half is another Corinthian slogan, and others think Paul is speaking loosely. His point is clear in either case: this sin touches the person in a singular way. The Church’s teaching on human love explains why: the body speaks the language of total self-giving, and here that language is used without the gift.
“do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (6:19)
The word “you” is plural and “body” is singular, as if each person’s body and all of them together were held in view. “You are not your own” is a hard sentence in any age, and it is good news: we belong to someone who paid dearly for us.
“For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (6:20)
Paul’s last word is positive. He gives no list of rules here. The body is an instrument of praise.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes this passage in its teaching on the resurrection: the dignity of the body comes from the fact that it belongs to Christ and will share his risen life (CCC 1004). The human body shares in the dignity of the image of God, and the whole person is meant to become a temple of the Spirit (CCC 364). Baptism makes us temples of the Holy Spirit (CCC 1265). The Church’s teaching on chastity (CCC 2337) and on sexual relations outside marriage (CCC 2353) rests on this view of the person. St John Paul II returned to this passage in his catecheses on human love.
Setting.
The Fourth Gospel opens with a sequence of days around the Jordan (1:29, 35, 43). John the Baptist has been asked who he is, and he has answered that he is not the Messiah. Now he does the last thing a witness can do: he points away from himself and lets his disciples go.
The Lectionary follows the Gospel of Mark this year, but on this Sunday it reads St John in all three years, because the Second Sunday continues the showing of the Lord that Epiphany celebrates (Introduction to the Lectionary, 105). St Mark’s Gospel takes up the Sunday course next week.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”” (1:36)
The verb for “watched” means to look intently, and it comes back in v. 42 when Jesus looks at Simon. John’s whole ministry ends in this pointing finger. Greatness in the Kingdom can be measured by how readily one lets others go to Jesus.
“When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?”” (1:38)
These are the first words of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, and they are a question. He does not begin by telling them what they ought to want. He says something similar at the empty tomb to Mary Magdalene: “Whom are you looking for?” (20:15). The question is put to everyone who reads this Gospel.
“He said to them, “Come and see.”” (1:39)
He gives no explanation, and offers no course of instruction. Discipleship in John begins by spending time with him. Philip will use the same words to invite Nathanael (1:46).
“It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.” (1:39)
The Greek says “the tenth hour”, as the POC keeps it. Many readers hear in this small detail the memory of someone who was there and never forgot the hour his life changed. The second disciple is not named. An old tradition sees in him the Beloved Disciple, but the Gospel does not say so.
“He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah”” (1:41)
Andrew says “we have found”, though in truth he was found. The one who has met Jesus goes first to his own family.
“He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas”” (1:42)
Andrew’s whole achievement is summed up in the word “brought”. Jesus says who Simon is and who he will become. The future tense is a promise, and it will take this man a long and painful time to grow into it.
How the Church reads it.
The Church’s reading of this passage is heard at every Mass. Just before Communion the priest holds up the Host and repeats John’s words, “Behold the Lamb of God”. The Catechism teaches that John points out in Jesus the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, and so shows that Jesus is both the Suffering Servant and the Paschal Lamb (CCC 608). It presents Simon, the one whom the Lord named Peter, as the rock of his Church (CCC 552, 881). And what Andrew does is what the Catechism says of the first disciples: they burned with the desire to proclaim Christ and to lead others to faith in him (CCC 425). St John Chrysostom says that Andrew, after staying with Jesus, did not keep the treasure to himself but hurried to his brother (in substance).
Why did Samuel not recognize God’s voice, if he lived in the sanctuary?
The text tells us: he “did not yet know the Lord” (3:7), and visions were rare in those days (3:1). Serving in holy things and meeting God personally are not the same. This is why parents, priests and spiritual guides matter: Eli could not hear the voice himself, but he recognized what was happening.
Does Paul look down on the body?
The opposite. He opposes those who said that the body did not matter. For Paul the body belongs to the Lord, is a temple of the Spirit, and will be raised. Sexual sin is serious in his eyes because the body is so precious. And the same Paul who says “Shun fornication!” announces a Lord who bought us at great price, so a person who has fallen comes back to mercy, in the sacrament of Penance, and never to despair (CCC 1422, 1465).
In the other Gospels Jesus calls Peter and Andrew by the lake, and Peter is named later. Which is right?
The Gospels do not all tell the story in the same order. Mark 1:16–20 (next Sunday’s Gospel) tells of the call beside the Sea of Galilee, and Matthew 16:18 tells of the naming at Caesarea Philippi. Many readers think that John records an earlier first meeting at the Jordan, which would explain why the fishermen responded so readily by the lake. Each evangelist arranged his material for his own purpose, and the Church teaches that they handed on the truth about Jesus (Dei Verbum 19; CCC 126).
This Sunday belongs to the first stretch of Ordinary Time, between Christmas and Lent, when the vestments are green and the Sunday Gospels begin to tell of the public life of Jesus. Tomorrow the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins in many countries (18 to 25 January), and Andrew leading his brother to Jesus is a good picture for that prayer: Christians draw closer to each other as they draw closer to him. Next Sunday is the Sunday of the Word of God, set by Pope Francis on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Aperuit Illis, 2019). Samuel’s prayer is a good way to prepare for it.