Homily for the Sunday Mass of January 25: “To fix one's gaze on the invisible light that eludes one's faith”

Sunday January 25 2026
3rd Sunday of the Year – Year A

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1^st Reading: Isaiah 8:23b-9:3
Psalm: 26 (27), 1, 4abcd, 13-14
2^rd reading: 1 Corinthians 1, 10-13.17
Gospel: Matthew 4, 12-23

The Gospel speaks of the arrest of John the Baptist as a prefiguration of the Lord's Passion, for the Greek text literally says: "when Jesus learned that John the Baptist had been delivered with the same verb by which we will hear the Lord say that the Son of Man will to be delivered in the hands of sinners. This is a sign for Jesus, and it is there that he will begin his public ministry. He leaves Nazareth and comes to settle in Capernaum — Kfar NahumLiterally the “village of consolation.” We know from the Gospel of John that during the baptism John the Baptist performed in Bethany beyond the Jordan, Jesus met at least Simon and Andrew, and probably other people from Galilee, perhaps James and John, sons of Zebedee. Therefore, when Jesus passed by and saw Andrew and Simon in the boat mending the nets and called them over, they were not strangers to Jesus, and Jesus was not a stranger to them.

But Saint Matthew recounts the scene as if it were a first encounter: it seems to me that this is to emphasize the power of Jesus' word. It is Jesus' call that provokes the response. “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately, leaving their nets, they followed him.The same applies to Jacques and Jean: "He called them. Immediately, leaving the boat and their father, they followed him." And this whole episode is placed in the light of this passage from the book of Isaiah that we heard in the first reading, and which Saint Matthew quotes in his Gospel to decipher what happens when Jesus comes to settle in Capernaum: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; and on those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.This prophecy, preserved from century to century, is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, the Word made flesh. He is—as he himself will say, as the Gospel of Saint John tells us (8:12)—himself the light of the worldSaint Teresa is very sensitive to this question of darkness and light, not only because, from Easter 1896, she will enter into what she calls “the thickest darkness”, which is a kind of spiritual experience of atheism that she has within herself, but because her perception of Heaven, our homeland towards which we walk, has made her feel painfully for a long time this exile from the earth as a place of darkness… and in this darkness shines the light of Christ.

This light in Thérèse takes many forms, perhaps first and foremost that of Holy Scripture. For example, she says to her sister Céline in a letter:

One day, as I was thinking about what I could do to save souls, a passage from the Gospel showed me a bright light. (LT 135 of August 15, 1892, to Céline).

This third Sunday in Ordinary Time, which Pope Francis has dedicated to the Word of God, invites us to reconsider how, in our lives, the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures that the Holy Spirit makes us hear as a living word, nourishes our lives. How does this word illuminate our lives, and how do we take the time to read it, meditate on it, and hold it in our hearts?

But another light appeared for Saint Teresa: that of the Passion of Christ. To another sister, Pauline—Sister Agnes of Jesus in religious life—she wrote a year and a half after entering the Carmel:

“I am suffering,” said Thérèse (she is not yet suffering from tuberculosis; it is more of an inner suffering she is experiencing), “I am suffering!… but the hope of the Fatherland gives me courage, soon we will be in Heaven… There there will be no more day or night, but the Face of Jesus will reign with an unparalleled light!… (LT 135 of August 15, 1892, to Céline)

And it was quite early on that Thérèse added to her name “Thérèse of the Child Jesus” the name “of the Holy Face”, because this Holy Face which she loved to contemplate was for her truly a source of light, revealing to her the depth of God’s merciful love.

Yes, in this world we live in today, which is sometimes quite dark, this world where we see less and less clearly what will happen in the months and years to come, Christ, he who “is unchanging,” as Thérèse says (LT 104), Christ remains our light, our inner light: our inner light so that we, in turn, may become light for the world. We will hear him in 15 days—next week, we will listen to the Gospel of the Beatitudes, which follows today's—which follows the Gospel of the Beatitudes: "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world."And we are light only with Christ the Light. This light dwells in our hearts. It dwells if we remain united to the Lord, it dwells if we meditate on the Holy Scriptures, if we contemplate Christ. But sometimes, this light seems to disappear… and Saint Teresa indeed experiences this darkness, which she finds difficult to describe, difficult to explain, as we read near the beginning of Manuscript C. And in her great prayer to Jesus, which forms Manuscript B, towards the end, she speaks of her own life of prayer. She speaks of it with the allegory of the little bird: she compares herself to a little bird that contemplates the eagles, that is, the great saints who seem to her to fly very high toward the sun, which is Christ. And she is a little bird covered in down that cannot fly, but that contemplates this sun. And in this contemplation, she also experiences something like a solar eclipse, meaning that her inner experience of prayer is one of dryness. She is there for the Lord morning and evening, an hour of prayer in the morning, an hour of prayer in the evening, and it seems to her that nothing happens. She describes it as follows:

With audacious abandon, [the little bird] wants to remain gazing at its divine Sun; nothing can frighten it, neither wind nor rain, and if dark clouds happen to hide the Star of Love, the little bird does not change its place, it knows that beyond the clouds its Sun always shines, that its brilliance can never be eclipsed for a moment. Sometimes, it is true, the little bird's heart is assailed by the storm; it seems to believe that nothing exists but the clouds that envelop it; it is then a moment of perfect joy for the poor, weak little creature. What happiness for it to remain there nonetheless, to gaze at the invisible light that eludes its faith!!!… (MsB 5r)

"To fix one's gaze on the invisible light that eludes one's faith..."

We could dwell at length on this paradoxical expression, which encapsulates Thérèse's entire journey of faith and encourages us to persevere in faith, even when we no longer see the light that comes from Christ, even when it seems that darkness surrounds us, that meaninglessness seizes us: to continue fix the invisible light that eludes our faiththat is to say, to continue to cling to Christ the light of the world, the comforter Christ who dwells in the village of consolation and who never abandons us… but who always seizes us, to lead us, by his Passion and by his Cross, to the glory of his resurrection.

Let us ask for this grace today, to keep the word of God in our hearts: that it may always remain a light for us.

Amen.