The Scriptures have a rich liturgical sense. This means that there is a way by which we read and hear the word of God that awakens our understanding of the Mass—and that there is a way by which we can worship that deepens our awareness of how salvation history is animated throughout the liturgy of the Mass. Today’s readings for the Thursday after the Epiphany offer a wonderful opportunity to reflect on and contemplate this rich methodology.
Why the Liturgical Sense?
Inasmuch as we were all created with capacity for God, the lived experience of our unsanctified human condition evidences that we also have an astonishing capacity for duplicity—not always out of malice, but merely out of the fractured condition of our own minds and hearts. Yes, we can sincerely believe one thing while acting in a way that contradicts it. St. Paul, writing the Church in Rome, says it this way, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Rom. 7:19).
Indeed, modern neuroscience only confirms what the spiritual masters have long observed: the frontal lobe, the seat of judgment, impulse control, and long‑term reasoning, is also the part of us most easily fatigued, stressed, or compromised. When it falters, we default to habit, emotion, and self‑preservation, rather than conviction. Thus, a person may genuinely love God, yet fail to love the brother in front of him; may profess faith, yet act from fear; may desire holiness, yet slip into patterns that betray that desire. The human condition is not merely weak—it is divided. And unless grace heals the fracture, belief and behavior drift apart.
This is precisely why the Church’s liturgy forms us through lex credendi, lex orandi, lex vivendi—the law of belief shaping the law of prayer, which in turn shapes the law of life. At Mass, we repeatedly confess what we believe, not as empty formulas but as spiritual realignment. Every “Thanks be to God” after the readings, every “I believe” of the Creed, every lifting of the heart in the Sursum Corda is a gentle but persistent pedagogy: become what you profess. Scripture echoes this divine rhythm: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” (Heb. 10:23) and “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (Jas. 1:22).
The liturgy truly intends to train the fractured mind and wandering heart to move in one direction—toward God—so that belief and action slowly converge. And when we turn back to today’s readings, we find that they do not merely illustrate these truths; they press them upon us with unwavering clarity, inviting us to let grace heal the duplicity within and draw us into the unity of life that only God can give.
Breaking Open the Lectionary
In today’s first reading from 1 John 4:19–5:4, we are confronted with declarations that offer no escape routes or softening: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar.” John is not accusing us of casual inconsistency; he is exposing the deep fracture within the human heart. If our tendency leans toward hypocrisy rather than divine coherence, then we become liars—not necessarily in a way visible to others, but in a way fully known to God. And John insists that we must come to know this truth about ourselves as well.
Yet the beauty of this passage is that he does not abandon us in the wilderness of self‑reproach or leave us stuck in the mud of not knowing how to change. Instead, he hands us a simple diagnostic—a spiritual true‑or‑false test: Is it burdensome for you to keep the commandments, or no? This, he says, is the measure of love: “For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”
For John, “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8), and following this framework comes the sequitur that love, in its essence, is not heavy, complicated, or bureaucratic. It does not require an act of Congress to do what is right. It flows naturally from the soul because we were created with the capacity for divine goodness—a goodness capable of overcoming temptation and every form of evil.
Hate, on the other hand, is exhausting. It demands more energy than we can sustain. It requires scheming, rehearsing grievances, and strategizing retaliation. As the psalmist observes, “The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them” (Ps. 37:12). Love frees; hate drains. John’s teaching invites us to examine which of these feels more “burdensome” in our own lives, for there we will discover whether our love for God is genuine or merely professed.
An Invitation
The next time you attend Mass, I would like for you to count the ways that the liturgy is forming you to become more consistent in your love for God, and after the Mass has concluded, write them down and contemplate these things for the remainder of the week.
Author’s Note: If you enjoyed breaking open the “liturgical sense” of today’s Scriptures, check out David Gray’s new book, The Liturgical Sense of the Readings at Mass – Year A.
Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash
