January 18, 2026 ~ 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Year A

Spiritual Reflection

 January 18, 2026 ~ 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Year A (PDF)

To you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus,
called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon
 the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
 their Lord, and ours.   Cor. 1:1-3 

St. John of the Cross has said that God loves a soul most when He strips it, for one can then achieve the fullness of faith. When you have no support from any of your systems of security, then God can attract you to rely solely on Him, the only rock of your salvation. The grace of denudation is a special gift of the Holy Spirit who, before descending onto a person, strips him. Often, we do not fully understand the work of the Holy Spirit. We know that He is the Power, the Paraclete, and the Love of the Father and the Son; but we often forget that it is He who is the principal author of our holiness. Therefore, He is the One who brings about the entire process that is indispensable to us on our path toward unity with God. This process has elements of attraction and elements of purgation. It is the Holy Spirit who denudes us; it is He who causes us to become poor. It is He who endows the poor since He is called “Father of the poor,” as professed in the hymn of Pentecost. 

Does the Holy Spirit endow us in order to make us rich? This would make no sense because, according to the Gospel, being rich in spirit is a curse. Stripping us and making us even poorer is His gift so that we may be more open to His strength and to His love. Only then will He Himself become a gift for us, since then He will be able to descend into the emptiness of our nakedness and fill us with His infinite power and love. 

A particularly important kind of denudation by which the Holy Spirit prepares us for His descent is the process of stripping us of the false image we have of ourselves and freeing us from living in falsehood. In the Gospel, St. John relates Christ’s promise to us that the Paraclete – the Holy Spirit – will convince the world about sin when He comes (Jn 16:8). This is one of the functions of the Holy Spirit who descends upon us in Confirmation – to convince us of our sin, to bestow the grace of humility. This is a fundamental grace of the Holy Spirit. It is because of this grace that we come to know who we really are, and we become convinced that we are sinners and people of little faith. 

If you are self-confident – if up until now you have not yet discovered your own sinfulness and are self-sufficient in everything – then, in reality, you do not need the Holy Spirit. Your attitude of self-confidence and your lack of humility close your heart to His descent upon you. If you do not feel that you are a sinner, you will not desire the redeeming action of the Holy Spirit in your life, and then you will not receive the graces of the sacrament of Confirmation. Humility and faith, the fundamental gifts of the Holy Spirit, open us ever more fully to His descent upon us and to acceptance of the Holy Spirit Himself as a gift.

Tadeusz Dajczer, The Gift of Faith, pp. 184-186

References from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

2013  "All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity." 65 All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." 66

In order to reach this perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ's gift, so that . . . doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor. Thus the holiness of the People of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the Church through the lives of so many saints. 67

 2546  "Blessed are the poor in spirit." 338 The Beatitudes reveal an order of happiness and grace, of beauty and peace. Jesus celebrates the joy of the poor, to whom the Kingdom already belongs: 339

The Word speaks of voluntary humility as "poverty in spirit"; the Apostle gives an example of God's poverty when he says: "For your sakes he became poor." 340

 Questions for Reflection

 1.          How have I experienced “the stripping of the false image I have of myself”? Do I see this as a ‘gift from the Holy Spirit’?
2.          How do I understand this call to Holiness?  How do the people in my life benefit from my response to this call?
3.          Ponder Mary’s Faith and Humility.  How does Her example of faith and humility shape my own? 

Prayer after Sharing 

Thank you, God, for allowing me to see the truth about my weaknesses and how it calls upon the abyss of your merciful Love.