17 January 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“even to your old age I am he, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” Isaiah 46:4
This Sunday asks a simple question: who carries whom? Moses, worn out by a complaining people, cries to God: “I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.” He even asks God whether he must “carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child”. God does not scold him. He takes some of the spirit that is on Moses and gives it to seventy elders, so that “they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”
Isaiah answers the question with a picture from Babylon. On feast days the statues of the gods were carried through the streets; now, says the prophet, “Bel bows down, Nebo stoops”, loaded on weary animals, idols that must be carried and cannot save. The God of Israel is the opposite: his people have been “borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb”, and he promises: “even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” So he can call the whole world: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!”
In the Gospel John the Baptist sees Jesus coming and cries: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” The Lamb lifts and carries away the weight that no Moses could carry: the sin of the world. John testifies that the Spirit came down and remained on him, and that “this is the Son of God.” Hebrews adds the goal of the journey: “a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God”, and the door is open “today”. Tomorrow we begin the Three Days' Fast. We fast not to carry ourselves by our own strength, but to hand our burden to the Lamb who carries it, and to enter his rest.
Theme: “I will carry and will save.”
Who carries whom? Moses cannot, idols cannot; God carries, and the Lamb takes away the sin of the world.
“I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.” Numbers 11:14
“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2
Apply: Carry part of someone's burden this week.
“even to your old age I am he, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” Isaiah 46:4
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Apply: Name one idol you carry and put it down during the fast.
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7
“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29
Apply: Make a good confession during the Three Days' Fast.
“O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,” Psalm 95:7–8
“So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his.” Hebrews 4:9–10
Apply: Keep Sunday as a day of rest with God and family.
Idols are carried; the true God carries us.
The Lamb takes away our sin and leads us into his rest.
Take-home resolution: Keep the Three Days' Fast faithfully this week, handing your burdens to the Lamb of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, today's readings ask: who carries whom? Moses is exhausted. The people complain about food, and he cries to God: I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me (Numbers 11:14). Many parents, priests and caregivers know that prayer.
God does not scold Moses. He takes some of the spirit that is on him and puts it on seventy elders, so that they shall bear the burden of the people along with you (Numbers 11:17). God's answer to our exhaustion is his Spirit, and brothers and sisters to share the load.
Isaiah gives a strong picture. In Babylon the statues of Bel and Nebo were carried through the streets on festival days. The prophet sees them loaded on weary animals, bowing and stooping: gods that have to be carried and cannot save. Then God speaks to his people: I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save (Isaiah 46:4). Idols are carried. The true God carries.
In the Gospel John the Baptist sees Jesus and cries: here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The heaviest burden of all, the sin of the world, no Moses could carry. The Lamb lifts it and carries it away, to the cross.
Hebrews tells us where the journey ends: a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9). And it warns: today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Tomorrow we begin the Three Days' Fast. Our ancestors kept it with great devotion; many still go to Kuravilangad and other shrines.
Let us keep it in the spirit of today's readings. Put down the idols we carry. Share someone else's burden. Give our sins to the Lamb who takes them away. And let him carry us, as he promised, even when we turn gray. Amen.
Children, John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said: here is the Lamb of God! Jesus takes away our sins.
When you are tired or sad, remember: God says, I will carry you. Tomorrow the Three Days' Fast begins. What small thing can you give up for Jesus?
Lord our God, you carried your people from the womb and promised to carry them to old age. When our burdens are too heavy for us, give us your Spirit and companions to share them. Take away our sins through your Lamb, and as we begin the fast of the Ninevites, let us not harden our hearts today, but enter the rest you have prepared. Glory to you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for ever. Amen.
This Sunday asks who carries whom. In the desert Moses cries that the people are too heavy for him, and God shares his spirit with seventy elders. In Isaiah the gods of Babylon are loaded onto tired animals, while the Lord says to his people: “I have made, and I will bear.” Hebrews points to the rest God still holds open “today”. And in the Gospel John sees the Lamb of God, who takes away the weight no one else could lift. The key words are burden, rest and Lamb. Tomorrow the Three Days' Fast begins, and these readings tell us in whose strength we keep it.
Setting.
Israel has left Sinai and is in the wilderness. The people are weeping for the food of Egypt: fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic (11:4–6). God has been angry, and now Moses reaches breaking point. This is one of the rawest prayers in the Bible. God answers it in two ways: there will be help for Moses, and there will be meat for the people, in such quantity that it becomes a judgment (11:31–34).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.” (11:14)
Scripture preserves this sentence for every parent, priest and carer who has felt it. The honest confession that one cannot go on is already a prayer.
“If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once” (11:15)
Elijah (1 Kings 19:4) and Jonah (Jonah 4:3) will pray much the same. God does not take any of them at their word. He treats such a prayer as a cry of pain.
“and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.” (11:17)
God's answer does not remove the people. It spreads the load. Leadership among God's people is shared from the beginning, and it rests on the Spirit and not on ability alone.
“because you have rejected the Lord who is among you” (11:20)
The fault named here is not hunger. It is the forgetting that the Lord is in their midst.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that the Church's liturgy sees in the institution of the seventy elders, together with the priesthood of Aaron and the service of the Levites, a prefiguring of the ordained ministry of the New Covenant (CCC 1541). Jesus too sends out seventy, or seventy-two, as Luke's manuscripts differ (Luke 10:1). The Church also learns from Moses that intercession can be honest before God (CCC 2574–2577).
Setting.
These chapters speak to the Jews in exile in Babylon, in the years when Cyrus of Persia was rising (he is named in 45:1) and before Babylon fell in 539 BC. Bel, a title of Marduk, was the chief god of Babylon, and Nebo (Nabu) was his son. At the New Year feast their statues were carried in great processions, and the names of kings such as Nebuchadnezzar contain the name of Nebo. For a defeated people the sight must have been overwhelming.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!” (45:18)
“Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” (45:22)
Astonishing words to be spoken to a captive people. The God of the exiles offers salvation to the whole world, including their captors.
“To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” (45:23)
Paul applies these words to Jesus in Philippians 2:10–11, and also in Romans 14:11. What the Lord says of himself here, the Church says of Christ.
“Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, their idols are on beasts and cattle; these things you carry are loaded as burdens on weary animals.” (46:1)
This is a prophet's picture, not a record of events: Cyrus in fact honoured Marduk when he took Babylon. The point is what idols are: they have to be carried, and they cannot carry anyone.
“even to your old age I am he, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” (46:4)
In Hebrew the “I” is repeated emphatically. It is a promise for the end of life as much as for its beginning, and God speaks here like a mother with a child (compare 49:15).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes Isaiah 45:22–24 as a witness to Israel's faith in the one God, and notes how Paul's hymn in Philippians applies the words to Jesus (CCC 201). It also teaches that God's tenderness can be expressed in the image of motherhood, as well as fatherhood (CCC 239).
Setting.
Hebrews is a sermon to tired Christians, probably of Jewish background, whose author is not named. In 3:7–11 the preacher has quoted Psalm 95: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”, with its warning about the desert generation who did not enter the land. He now asks what God's “rest” really is. His method is to bring together Psalm 95:11 and Genesis 2:2.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“For indeed the good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.” (4:2)
A note on the text. The ancient manuscripts differ here. One group speaks of people not united with those who listened (followed by the NRSV), another of a message not united with faith in the hearers. The Malayalam POC gives the plain sense: they did not believe. Either way, the word needs faith to do its work.
“And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” (4:4)
Genesis 2:2. God's rest is not tiredness but the completion and joy of his work, and this is what he wants to share.
“For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day.” (4:8)
In Greek, Joshua's name is Iēsous, the same as Jesus. The preacher's first hearers would have caught this: the first Joshua led into the land, and the second leads into God's rest.
“So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God;” (4:9)
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism names “entering into God's rest” (Hebrews 4:7–11) among the Scripture's images of the blessed life (CCC 1720). It teaches that Christ's Sunday fulfils the spiritual truth of the sabbath and announces our eternal rest (CCC 2175). St Augustine begins his Confessions by telling God that our heart is restless until it rests in him, and he closes the City of God with the same vision of the eternal sabbath (in substance).
Setting.
John's Gospel does not narrate the baptism of Jesus directly. It gives us the witness of the Baptist, who says what he saw. The passage belongs to the opening week of the Gospel, marked by “the next day” (1:29, 35, 43). John has already told the priests and Levites that he is not the Messiah (1:19–27). Now the Baptist points away from himself to the one coming toward him, and that one is the centre of Denha.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29)
Moses could not carry the people. The Lamb carries what no one could: not only the people's complaints, but the sin of the whole world.
“I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” (1:31)
The purpose of John's whole ministry is Denha: that he might be revealed. The prophet says twice that he did not know him, and that knowledge came as a gift.
“I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” (1:32)
The dove may recall the Spirit over the waters of creation (Genesis 1:2), or Noah's dove after the flood. John does not explain it.
“And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” (1:34)
A note on the text. Most manuscripts read “the Son of God”, which the NRSV and the POC follow. Some ancient witnesses read “God's chosen one”. Both titles fit what the Father says at the baptism in the other Gospels.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that John's title reveals that Jesus is at once the Suffering Servant who silently allows himself to be led to the slaughter and the Paschal Lamb, the symbol of Israel's redemption (CCC 608), and that the baptism of Jesus is the beginning of his mission as God's suffering Servant (CCC 536). St Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on this verse, says that one Lamb died for all, in order to gain the whole flock for God the Father (in substance).
Is it wrong to complain to God as Moses does?
No. The Psalms and the prophets are full of such prayers, and God answers Moses with help and without a rebuke. What the people did is different: they complained against God with their backs to him, while Moses complains to God with his face toward him (compare CCC 2574–2577).
Did the Jews lose God's rest, according to Hebrews?
No. The warning is about one generation in the desert, and it is addressed to the Christian hearers: “let us take care” (4:1). The preacher sees the same danger in the Church. The Church honours the covenant with Israel, which God has never revoked (CCC 121, 839).
If Jesus takes away the sin of the world, why is there still sin?
The Lamb's sacrifice is complete, and its power reaches every sinner. But it does not force anyone. We receive it through faith, baptism and repentance, and the struggle goes on in us until the end (CCC 1426, 1264). This is why we fast and confess.
Tomorrow the Three Days' Fast begins, kept in the East Syriac tradition from the sixth century, when a plague in Persia ended after the people fasted and prayed. In Kerala Moonnu Nombu is especially loved at Kuravilangad, with its ship procession recalling Jonah's voyage. On this Sunday of Denha, the Holy Qurbana sets the fast in the right light. We do not fast in order to carry ourselves by our own strength. We fast to hand our burden to the Lamb, who carries it. Priests and catechists may remind families to keep the fast in a form suited to children and the elderly, following their own diocese's guidance. The Church Unity Octave also begins tomorrow.