I’ve got a confession that tends to surprise people—especially the seminarians I work with as a spiritual director.
Every so often, one of them comes back from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They’re glowing. Jet-lagged, sure—but glowing. They tell stories about standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, touching the stone of the Holy Sepulchre, praying in silence on a hillside in Nazareth. And eventually one of them will lean in and ask,
“Father Jim… what was your favorite place in Israel?”
And every time, I have to tell them the truth: I’ve never been.

Thank you for taking the time to read this homily for THE THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – January 25, 2026 – Your support means a great deal to me, and I’m deeply grateful for the many who share these messages with their friends, families and social media followers. If you’ve found meaning in these words, I’d be grateful if you’d share them with others who might benefit.

And for those who prefer listening, you can find the audio version on SoundCloud HERE or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes HERE. Your comments, messages, and the way you’ve embraced these homilies continue to inspire me.   Sincerely in Christ -Father Jim

That usually earns me a look — somewhere between disbelief and disappointment. How can a priest who loves Scripture, who preaches these stories every week, never have gone?

The first reason was simple—I was terrified of flying. It kept me grounded for almost twenty years. I didn’t leave the country until I was 38. By then I had already been a priest for fourteen years. When I finally did go—to Rome—I realized how much fear had limited me. I walked around like a kid who’d been let loose in a candy store. If Rome could move me that deeply, I can only imagine what the Holy Land would do.

Then there’s the reality that I never felt curious to want to go. Maybe worried that the actual places can’t live up to the place I’ve carried in my imagination since childhood. These stories—the shoreline, the crowds, the call of the fishermen—they’ve lived inside me for decades. And I’ve wondered, irrationally, whether standing there might somehow shrink them. In some ways I know that’s silly too – and in recent years that has definitely waned where I have felt my interest starting to grow.
But then there’s the heaviest reason.

Every time I hear about that land, it’s the same language: tension, violence, retaliation, fear. Not ancient history—right now. October 7th, 2023, made that impossible to ignore. Two friends recently invited me to join them on pilgrimage. One was half-joking—he just wanted to hear what my mother’s reaction was. The other was serious and kind. But in both cases, I found myself saying, “No thanks.”

Because it’s hard to picture peace where the darkness still feels so thick.

Which is what kept coming to mind when I sat down with today’s readings:

In the first Reading, Isaiah is speaking into that kind of darkness. Seven hundred years before Christ, he’s addressing people who know what it means to lose their homeland, their security, their future. Their cities have been ravaged. Their borders violated. Their sense of identity shaken. This isn’t metaphorical gloom—it’s lived experience.

And Isaiah says something almost reckless. That line is so familiar we risk missing how bold it is.: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Isaiah is speaking to people who know that darkness. Nothing in their situation has changed yet. The danger hasn’t passed. The occupation hasn’t ended.

And still—Isaiah says light.

Now here’s the crucial detail: Matthew doesn’t quote Isaiah by accident. He tells us explicitly that when Jesus leaves Nazareth and settles in Capernaum—in Galilee, in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali—this is the very place Isaiah was talking about. The same region. The same borderlands. The same land where the darkness once felt overwhelming.

Matthew is saying: Pay attention. God didn’t move the fulfillment somewhere safer. He didn’t relocate it to Jerusalem. He didn’t wait for conditions to improve. The promise is fulfilled right there.

But not in the way anyone expected.

Because what arrives is not political peace. Not secure borders. Not permanent safety enforced by power. What arrives is Jesus. The Light Isaiah promised does not erase the darkness overnight. It enters it.

And this is where expectations start to clash—with Isaiah’s audience, with Jesus’ contemporaries, and with us. Then, as now, people wanted a fulfillment they could point to on a map. A version of salvation that could be defended, enforced, or legislated. Something visible and measurable—something that would finally prove God was on our side. A victory you could photograph. Borders you could secure. A peace you could guarantee through power.

That tension hasn’t gone away.

In fact, something curious—and concerning—has been happening recently, especially in certain Christian circles. There’s been a renewed push around what’s often called Christian Zionism: the belief that Christians must actively support specific political outcomes in the Holy Land in order to bring about, or at least demonstrate, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

For some leaders and pastors, this takes on a real sense of urgency—as if God’s promises remain unfinished unless they are backed by the right alliances, the right policies, the right victories. As if history itself is waiting on Christian political action to complete what God began. Almost as if Jesus fulfilled Isaiah… but only halfway.

But that is not what we believe.

As Catholics, we do not believe that the promises made to Israel are still waiting for a political solution. We do not believe that the restoration of the twelve tribes or the fulfillment of the prophets remains incomplete.
We believe they have been fulfilled.

Not through military strength.
Not through territorial control.
Not through Christian effort.

They are fulfilled in Jesus Christ himself.

The twelve tribes are gathered under the twelve Apostles.
The New Israel is not defined by bloodline or borders, but by baptism.
And the people of God are gathered from every nation into one Body—the Church.

This is not a rejection of Israel. It is the culmination of Israel. The Light Isaiah promised is not a regime. It is not a nation-state. It is not a geopolitical solution. It is a Person—who steps into darkness and refuses to leave it untouched.

There’s another detail in Isaiah that is critically important. Listen again:

“The people who walked in darkness…”

Walked.

From the beginning, God’s people are always on the move. Abraham leaves his homeland. Israel wanders in the desert. Exile follows settlement. Return follows exile. Yes—God gave Israel a homeland at a particular moment in history. That land mattered. It shaped identity, worship, and memory. But it was never meant to be eternal. Because Earth itself was never meant to be our final home.

This life is a pilgrimage. We are passing through. Always on the way. Heaven—that is the promise that lasts. Or more honestly, Heaven is the hope we pray to reach.

So when we become fixated on land, on borders, on political outcomes, on sacred geography—when we obsess over who controls what, who owns what, who belongs where—we risk missing the point.

The promise of God was never ultimately about possession. It was about salvation. And salvation has already come.

Jesus doesn’t stand on the shoreline of Galilee and say, “Wait.” He doesn’t say, “Watch history unfold.” He says one sentence: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Not someday. Not after the next war. Now.

When we see destruction—globally or painfully close to home—the point is not to reread ancient prophecies as if God hasn’t acted yet.

God has acted. “It is finished,” Jesus tells us from the Cross. So the question is no longer whether the Light will come. The question is whether we will turn toward it.
And this brings us to the Gospel.

Jesus walks along the Sea of Galilee—the very shoreline Isaiah named—and calls fishermen. Ordinary men. Rooted lives. Real families, responsibilities and obligations. And he says, simply: “Follow me.”

And they drop their nets. Which sounds beautiful—until we remember what nets are. That’s how you eat. That’s how you survive. That’s how you define yourself.

Jesus doesn’t wait for peace before calling them. He calls them in the middle of instability.

There’s a danger we all face—the temptation to confuse the road with the destination.
Pilgrims walk. They don’t settle. They don’t pitch permanent tents halfway there. But when we cling to land as if it saves us, when we cling to ideology as if it redeems us, when we cling to certainty as if it guarantees peace, we pitch a tent in the middle of the road and call it home.

Jesus does not come to hand us property. He comes to hand us a cross. He does not say, “Defend this place.” He says, “Follow me.”

The world may still be dark. The headlines may still be heavy. But the Light has come.

The only question left is whether we’re willing to keep walking—
trusting that the One who calls us
is already ahead of us.