31 January 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malankara Rite · Latin Rite · മലയാളം
““For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16
As Israel stands at the edge of the promised land, Moses warns them not to seek the future through soothsayers and diviners, as the nations do: “You must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God.” Instead God makes a promise: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” At Horeb the people had been terrified by the fire and the voice, and God answered their fear with tenderness: “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.” Israel waited for that prophet for centuries. In Isaiah the same God speaks to his exiles in Babylon: “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go. O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river.” God is not a distant force to be manipulated by horoscopes and lucky times; he is a teacher who wants to lead us.
In the Gospel the Prophet like Moses speaks at night to Nicodemus. He recalls a strange scene from the wilderness: when the people were dying from serpent bites, Moses lifted up a bronze serpent on a pole, and whoever looked at it lived. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” The Cross is the pole, and the One lifted up is the Son. Then comes the verse that sums up the whole Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God did not send his Son “to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Judgment is not God's revenge; it is our choice: “the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.”
Hebrews encourages Christians who have grown tired: “God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints.” Do not become sluggish; imitate “those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Abraham waited long, and “having patiently endured, obtained the promise.” Denha reveals Christ as the Prophet who speaks God's words, the Son lifted up for our healing, and the Light that shows our deeds as they are. “But those who do what is true come to the light.” Today the Church also remembers St John Bosco, who brought countless poor boys of Turin out of the streets and into the light of Christ, with patience, joy and a deep love for the Eucharist and Our Lady.
Theme: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
Christ revealed as the Prophet like Moses, the Son lifted up, and the Light of the world.
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” Deuteronomy 18:15
“While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”” Matthew 17:5
Apply: Put away every horoscope and lucky charm; listen to Christ.
“Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go.” Isaiah 48:17
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Apply: Ask God each morning this week to lead you in the way you should go.
“So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.” Numbers 21:9
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” John 3:14–15
Apply: Spend five minutes daily before a crucifix.
“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” Psalm 27:1
“But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”” John 3:21
Apply: Bring one hidden fault into the light of confession.
God has spoken in his Son and lifted him up for our salvation.
Leave the darkness, look at the Cross, and come to the light.
Take-home resolution: Go to confession this week and place a crucifix where your family will see it.
Dear brothers and sisters, Moses tells Israel not to seek the future from soothsayers and diviners, but to trust God's promise: the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15).
Through Isaiah, God says: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go (Isaiah 48:17). God is not a power to be managed by horoscopes and lucky times. He is a Father who teaches and leads.
In the Gospel Jesus, the Prophet like Moses, tells Nicodemus: just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (John 3:14–15).
And then the heart of the Gospel: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). He did not come to condemn but to save. Judgment happens when we prefer darkness; salvation, when we come to the light.
Hebrews tells us not to become sluggish, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises (Hebrews 6:12), like Abraham, who waited and obtained the promise.
Let us look at the Cross, leave every superstition, and bring our deeds into the light. And like St John Bosco, let us bring the young to Christ. Amen.
Children, God loves the whole world so much that he gave us Jesus! Jesus was lifted up on the Cross so that we can live with him for ever.
Look at a cross today and say: thank you, Jesus!
Lord Jesus Christ, Prophet like Moses and only Son of the Father, you were lifted up on the Cross so that all who believe in you may have eternal life. Free us from every superstition and every darkness, teach us and lead us in the way we should go, give us patience to inherit your promises, and through the prayers of St John Bosco help us bring the young into your light. Glory to you, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever. Amen.
In Denha the Church asks how God makes himself known, and the four readings give an answer that moves from a voice to a lifted-up Son. Deuteronomy forbids seeking the future through diviners and promises instead a prophet like Moses, with God’s words in his mouth. In Isaiah the God of the exile says, “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you”, and sighs over a people who did not listen. Hebrews tells tired believers to imitate Abraham, who trusted God’s sworn promise and waited. In John the prophet like Moses speaks to Nicodemus by night: as Moses lifted up the serpent, so the Son must be lifted up, because God so loved the world. The Genesis story of Abraham’s only son lies behind Hebrews and, for many readers, behind John as well. The key words are hear, wait, lifted up and light.
Setting.
Deuteronomy presents itself as Moses’ last words on the plains of Moab, with Israel about to enter the land. Chapters 16–18 describe the offices that will guide the people: judges, the king, priests and prophets. Just before our reading (18:9–12), Moses lists the practices of the surrounding nations: divination, soothsaying, sorcery, consulting the dead.
The point is that Israel does not need to pry into the future or force the hand of the unseen. God himself will speak. The people had asked for this at Horeb, when they were terrified by the fire and the voice (5:23–27; Exodus 20:19). God’s reply is one of the tenderest moments in the book: “They are right in what they have said.”
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the Lord your God does not permit you to do so.” (18:14)
This is a word against fear as much as against superstition. Divination tries to control what only God holds. Those who know the Father do not need to.
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” (18:15)
“From among your own people”: the Word comes in a human voice, from a brother. St Peter and St Stephen both apply this verse to Jesus (Acts 3:22; 7:37).
“I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.” (18:18)
See Jeremiah 1:9. Jesus says of himself, “the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49). In Jesus the Word does not merely enter a mouth: the Word has become flesh.
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council teaches that Christ, the Word made flesh, completes and perfects revelation (Dei Verbum 4). He is anointed prophet as well as priest and king (CCC 436). The Catechism also repeats Deuteronomy’s warning: God can reveal the future to his prophets, but all forms of divination are to be rejected, including horoscopes, astrology and palm reading, because they conceal a desire for power over time and history (CCC 2115–2116). The sound attitude is to put oneself confidently into the hands of Providence (CCC 2115).
Setting.
Isaiah 40–55 speaks to the exiles in Babylon in the years before the Persian king Cyrus took the city (539 BC) and allowed them to return. Chapter 48 closes the first part of this section, and it is a sharp one: God reminds a stubborn people that he has told them everything in advance. The great deliverance is about to happen. The one “the Lord loves”, who will act against Babylon (v. 14), is understood to be Cyrus, named earlier (44:28; 45:1).
The exiles saw the gods of Babylon carried in great processions, and they might well have thought that Babylon’s gods had won. Isaiah’s answer is that only the Lord made the heavens and the earth, only he has told the future, and only he can redeem.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called: I am He; I am the first, and I am the last.” (48:12)
The people’s first duty is the same as in Deuteronomy: listen.
“And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.” (48:16)
A sudden new speaker. The text does not say who he is; many scholars think of the prophet himself, or of the Servant of the following chapter (49:1). Some early Christian writers, Origen among them, heard here the Son, sent by the Father with the Spirit (in substance).
“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go.” (48:17)
God describes himself as a teacher and a guide. What he commands is for our good, not for his. Diviners promise to tell what will happen; God shows the road.
“O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea;” (48:18)
This is not anger but longing. Psalm 81:13 sighs in the same way: “O that my people would listen to me”. Compare Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. The images of river and waves are precious in a dry land: a life that keeps flowing.
“Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy,” (48:20)
A new Exodus. The news of it is for “the end of the earth”: the reach of God’s saving act is already wider than Israel.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that God is Truth and his teaching is trustworthy, because his words are true and his law is truth (CCC 215). It also says that he is the first and the last (CCC 198), the beginning and the end of everything, in words taken from these chapters of Isaiah. The Letter to the Hebrews calls Christ the one who is the same yesterday, today and for ever (Hebrews 13:8), and the Book of Revelation gives him this very title of God: the first and the last. On a Sunday of Denha the reading tells us that the One who showed himself in Christ is the Teacher who has been patiently leading his people all along.
Setting.
Hebrews is a sermon (13:22) written to Christians, probably of Jewish background, who were growing tired. Its author is not named, and the Church received it among the letters linked with St Paul. The verses just before today’s reading are among the sternest in the New Testament: those who fall away after being enlightened cannot be restored, and land that bears only thorns is close to being cursed (6:4–8). This is a warning and not a limit on God’s mercy: the Church teaches that there is no offence, however serious, that she cannot forgive (CCC 982).
Now the preacher changes his tone. He has spoken severely so as to wake them, but he is confident of better things. The ground of hope that he gives them is not their strength. It is God’s oath to Abraham, which he goes on to expound (6:16–20).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do.” (6:10)
“The saints” here means fellow Christians, probably the poor or imprisoned among them (10:32–34). Their love is what the preacher sees and praises first. Service of others is itself service of God.
“so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (6:12)
This looks ahead to the great roll of witnesses in Hebrews 11. Christian life is learned by imitation.
“When God made a promise to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself,” (6:13)
The oath of Genesis 22:16–17 comes after Abraham was willing to offer Isaac, “your only son”. So Hebrews and today’s Gospel stand on the same mountain.
“And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise.” (6:15)
Abraham was seventy-five when the promise came (Genesis 12:4) and a hundred when Isaac was born (Genesis 21:5). Even then he saw only the beginning of what was promised (Hebrews 11:13).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism presents hope as “the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (CCC 1820, quoting Hebrews 6:19) and names Abraham as the one who hoped against hope (CCC 1819). It presents Abraham as the model of the obedience of faith (CCC 144–146). The Council of Trent cited Hebrews 6:10 in its teaching on merit (Decree on Justification, chapter 16). The Catechism explains that merit before God rests wholly on his grace and on his choice to associate us with his work (CCC 2006–2011). St Augustine says that when God crowns our merits he crowns his own gifts (in substance).
Setting.
Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leader, comes to Jesus “by night” (3:1–2). Jesus speaks to him of being born from above, “of water and Spirit” (3:5). Then Nicodemus fades from view, and the talk opens out into one of the most famous passages of the Bible. He does not vanish from the Gospel: he defends Jesus before the council (7:50–51) and comes to his burial with myrrh and aloes (19:39). The man who came in the dark ends in the light.
The background is Numbers 21:4–9. When the people in the desert were bitten by serpents, God told Moses to set a bronze serpent on a pole, and those who looked at it lived. The Book of Wisdom had already explained this carefully: “the one who turned toward it was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you, the Savior of all” (Wisdom 16:7).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” (3:14)
“Must” (dei) is the Gospel’s word for God’s plan. The serpent was the very image of what was killing them. So Christ takes on what kills us: God “made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
““For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (3:16)
In John, “the world” is often the place that resists God. This makes the verse more astonishing: God loved a world that did not love him. The word is “gave”, and it includes the giving on the Cross.
““Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (3:17)
Compare 12:47. The Son’s purpose is salvation. This is what the season of Denha shows the world.
“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” (3:19)
Judgment is not the arbitrary act of an angry God. The light comes, and we are shown to ourselves. Nicodemus came by night.
“But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” (3:21)
To “do what is true” is a Semitic phrase: truth is something done. The last words give all the credit to God.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes this passage when it says that the Word became flesh so that we might know God’s love (CCC 458). Christ did not come to condemn; whoever rejects the grace offered judges himself, and “receives according to his works” (CCC 679). God predestines no one to go to hell (CCC 1037), and Christ died for all without exception (CCC 605). St Augustine draws out the comparison with the serpent: those bitten in the desert looked and lived, and so those wounded by sin look in faith on the death of Christ and are healed (in substance). St John Chrysostom notes that God gave not a servant or an angel but his only Son, and that the greatness of the gift shows the greatness of the love (in substance). The Catechism also names the bronze serpent as an image God himself permitted, which pointed to salvation through the incarnate Word (CCC 2130).
Wasn’t the bronze serpent an idol? Why would God command such an image?
The serpent was not worshipped in Numbers, and God saved through it, as Wisdom 16:7 explains. When people later burned offerings to it, King Hezekiah rightly broke it in pieces (2 Kings 18:4). The difference is what the Catechism teaches: an image pointing beyond itself to God’s saving work differs from an idol taking God’s place (CCC 2129–2132).
If “whoever believes” has eternal life, what of those who have never heard of Christ?
John 3 speaks to those to whom the light has come and who refuse it. The Church teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel, but seek God with a sincere heart and try to do his will, may attain eternal salvation, always through the grace of Christ (Lumen Gentium 16; CCC 847). This is no reason to be careless about mission: God wants all to know the truth (CCC 851).
Is it wrong for Christians to check a horoscope or an auspicious time?
The Church says plainly that consulting horoscopes, astrology and omens contradicts the honour and loving trust we owe to God alone (CCC 2116). This is a word to believers about their own trust in God. A Christian can plan wisely and consult experts, while placing the future in the hands of the Father who teaches and leads him.
Denha, “the dawning”, celebrates the Lord’s baptism and his showing to the world, and today’s Gospel, spoken to a man who came in the dark, is a Denha Gospel: “the light has come”. Its talk of being born “of water and Spirit” (3:5) belongs to the same mystery, for baptism was anciently called enlightenment (CCC 1216). The St Thomas Cross, so dear to our Church, shows the Cross as the sign of life and glory, its ends blossoming. It is a fitting picture of John’s “lifted up”, in which death and exaltation are one. At the Holy Qurbana we look with faith on the One lifted up, as the bitten Israelites looked, and we are healed. Today the Church also remembers St John Bosco, who with patience and joy brought the poor boys of Turin to the light of Christ.