06/04/2026
We enter into what the liturgical calendar commonly calls Ordinary Time this Sunday. Ordinary Time is a prolonged season that will only come to a terminus with the dawning of Advent several months from now. The liturgical color of Ordinary Time is green, symbolizing growth – the goal of this season being our mutual growth in grace.
On this 1st Sunday of Ordinary Time – properly called the 1st After Trinity – God’s Word will teach us that faith trusts in Christ for eternal life.
As our Lord’s parable will teach us in Luke 16, when the beggar Lazarus died, he was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. For he was truly Abraham’s seed. Like Abraham, he believed in the Lord, and the Lord “counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). The name Lazarus means “God is my help.” The unnamed rich man, on the other hand, did not love or trust in God. For he evidently cared little for the beggar at his gate. And “he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). He who loved and trusted in possessions and prestige died and was in torments in Hell (Luke 16:19–31). We learn, therefore, that repentance and faith are worked only through Moses and the prophets—that is, the Word of God, for it points us to Christ, the Savior of sinners. Only through His death and resurrection are we brought the comfort of life everlasting.
