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2026-01-05Vatican NewsLatestArchive
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Reading

A reading from the letter of John

1 John 3:22–4:6
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition — Public Domain

3:22And whatsoever we shall ask, we shall receive of him: because we keep his commandments and do those things which are pleasing in his sight.

3:23And this is his commandment: That we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as he hath given commandment unto us.

3:24And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in him, and he in him. And in this we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us.

4:1Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Try the spirits... Viz., by examining whether their teaching be agreeable to the rule of the Catholic faith, and the doctrine of the church. For as he says, (ver. 6,) He that knoweth God, heareth us [the pastors of the church]. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.

4:2By this is the spirit of God known. Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: Every spirit which confesseth, etc... Not that the confession of this point of faith alone, is, at all times, and in all cases, sufficient; but that with relation to that time, and for that part of the Christian doctrine, which was then particularly to be confessed, taught, and maintained against the heretics of those days, this was the most proper token, by which the true teachers might be distinguished form the false.

4:3And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and he is now already in the world. That dissolveth Jesus... Viz., either by denying his humanity, or his divinity. He is now already in the world... Not in his person, but in his spirit, and in his precursors.

4:4You are of God, little children, and have overcome him. Because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

4:5They are of the world. Therefore of the world they speak: and the world heareth them.

4:6We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth us not. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Gospel

From the Gospel according to Matthew

Matthew 4:12-17,23-25
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition — Public Domain

12And when Jesus had heard that John was delivered up, he retired into Galilee:

13And leaving the city Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capharnaum on the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and of Nephthalim;

14That it might be fulfilled which was said by Isaias the prophet:

15Land of Zabulon and land of Nephthalim, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles:

16The people that sat in darkness, hath seen great light: and to them that sat in the region of the shadow of death, light is sprung up.

17From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

23And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom: and healing all manner of sickness and every infirmity, among the people.

24And his fame went throughout all Syria, and they presented to him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and such as were possessed by devils, and lunatics, and those that had the palsy, and he cured them:

25And much people followed him from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Gloss

Commentary

On the Reading
  • R 4:1,4:2,4:6The passage constructs an epistemology of communion: discernment is not private insight but a test keyed to apostolic hearing. The boundary marker is christological confession under pressure, yet the final criterion is reception of the apostolic voice—truth recognized by adherence, error by refusal.
  • R 3:22,3:23Prayer and ethics are fused into a single economy: requests are not raw entitlement but participation in commanded life. The center of that life is simultaneously doctrinal (belief in the Son) and social (love), making “commandment” a rule for both mind and body politic.
On the Gospel
  • G 14,15,16Matthew reads Jesus’ relocation as prophetic choreography: the messianic work begins on a borderland, where mixed peoples and compromised histories sit. The fulfillment citation frames the ministry as an invasion of illumination into a death-region, not an inward spiritual upgrade.
  • G 23,25The narrative pairs word and deed to form a public summons: teaching names the kingdom; healing exhibits its jurisdiction over disorder. The widening following—from local Galilee to trans-Jordan crowds—signals a kingdom that gathers peripheries into a single orbit around the preacher.

DoctrinalGod is known by adherence to the apostolic Christ confessed in the flesh, and that confession is proven in commanded love. The kingdom arrives as light and rule, announcing repentance and manifesting authority over the world’s disorders.

Heterodox Reading
John turns prayer into a bargain and then calls it love. Ask and you will receive, because you have already obeyed; desire is permitted only after it has been domesticated. “Abide” becomes surveillance, the Spirit a receipt proving you’re inside the right intimacy. Then comes the dread: not every spirit. The test is blunt, almost crude: say the right thing about flesh. The body is the battleground because the body is where people slip away. “Dissolving Jesus” is the urge to make him easier, purer, less embarrassing, less like need. Antichrist is not a monster but a soothing solvent. Matthew’s Jesus begins when John is arrested, as if the kingdom feeds on the removal of the forerunner. He moves to a borderland, a mixed place, and calls it light, but the first word of that light is penance: a demand, not comfort. The healings read like conquest—torments, devils, lunacy—an inventory of misery drawn toward him by rumor and hunger. The crowds follow because pain loves a strong center, and because darkness will accept any light that promises a body to hold.
Semina Verbi
John binds efficacy in prayer to an inner congruence: you ask and receive because your wanting has been trained. “Commandment” collapses into a double fidelity—trust a person, love the others—and the promised “Spirit” reads like the felt seam where intention and action stop fighting. The warning about “spirits” is not occult; it is about contagious voices. Test them by whether they keep the story whole: the real arrives in flesh, not as an idea that dissolves the weight of bodies. “Antichrist” is the psychology of abstraction that flatters you out of responsibility. Matthew shows how that voice moves through geography and mood: prison news, a retreat, then a public turn into Galilee’s mixed margins. Light is not a concept here; it is a campaign of attention—teaching, announcing, touching the sick. “Repent” is a change of direction because a new order is near enough to reorganize desire. The crowds follow not because they grasp a theory but because wholeness seems possible. Semina Verbi: the “testing of spirits” resembles Buddhist discernment between wholesome and unwholesome mind-states and Stoic scrutiny of impressions; the insistence on flesh echoes Hindu avatara devotion and Jewish insistence that holiness lives in concrete commandments; the “light in darkness” aligns with Sufi imagery of illumination. Speculation: all of them aim at the same human problem—voices that promise transcendence by skipping the body—and answer it by yoking vision to love and repair.