Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
January 5, 2024
Jesus decided to go to Galilee, and he found Philip.
And Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the town of Andrew and Peter.
Philip found Nathanael and told him,
“We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law,
and also the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”
But Nathanael said to him,
“Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him,
“Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him.”
Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Nathanael answered him,
“Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Do you believe
because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?
You will see greater things than this.”
And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see the sky opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
I am a very practical person. If I’m honest, it can be difficult for me to fully embrace and understand the virgin birth of Christ, his resurrection from the dead, the true presence in the Eucharist, and other church teachings. Do we have faith to believe that these things are possible with God, or do we discount them as only stories that should not be taken literally? Do we believe in the possibility of the supernatural, unexplainable power of God?
In infinite love, God doesn’t blame us for our non-belief. God encourages us along our faith journey and gives us opportunities to be open to love and God’s plan for each of us.
My wife and I have children who have grown up to be critical thinkers. Hearing their deepening questions about the Catholic faith encourages me to do more reading and study and to think more deeply about my beliefs and how I can pass on our Catholic faith to each of them.
I have always been fascinated by the shroud of Turin, incorruptible bodies of saints, eucharistic miracles, the story of Juan Diego and his tilma, and other physical signs on this earth that give us tangible messages that supernatural events have occurred and continue to occur all around us, if only we can open our eyes.
I wonder if I would have been biased like Nathanael and felt nothing good could come from Nazareth. His story encourages me because his honesty was praised. God can work with that sort of honesty in admitting our weaknesses of faith and inviting God to help our unbelief, especially the parts that are the most difficult to understand. I look forward to the day we will “see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
Prayer
In your goodness, O Lord God, you chose Nathanael to follow in the footsteps of your Son. In so doing, he became his disciple and intimate friend in the founding of the early Christian Church. Inspire all your Christian people today to live in such a way that they too can be called disciples of Jesus in the building of his kingdom on earth. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day

Like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (whose feast day was yesterday), St. John Neumann is an American saint who made a lasting impact on the Church in this nation by serving immigrants through education—as bishop of Philadelphia, he formally established the first parochial school system.
John was born in 1811 in Bohemia (part of the Austrian empire at the time, and now part of the Czech Republic). He was certain that he was called to the priesthood, and entered the seminary, where he studied theology and furthered his learning of languages so as to serve many different people. By the time he was 24, he had mastered six different languages.
When he was ready for ordination, he ran into an obstacle—Bohemia had a surplus of priests, and ordinations were stopped. John wrote to bishops all over Europe, but no one needed more priests.
So John wrote to a bishop in New York. He had learned English by working in a factory with other English-speaking workers, and the New York bishop was glad to have him. John was ordained just weeks after arriving in America and became one of 36 priests who were serving 200,000 Catholics—a number that was growing thanks to newly arrived Irish, Italian, and German immigrants.
John was sent to serve people in western New York and Pennsylvania—he ministered to Catholics living in farms, villages, and coal-mining towns. People made fun of him when they saw him riding a horse from place to place because he was short and his feet didn’t fit in the stirrups.
The isolation of the rural communities awakened a desire for community within John, so in 1842 he joined the Redemptorist order of priests and brothers. Six years later, he became a naturalized American citizen.
As a Redemptorist priest, he served a parish in Baltimore before being named bishop of Philadelphia in 1852. The city was growing rapidly as a center of industry that drew immigrant labor. During his time as bishop, John established a new parish every month, and he organized a school system to accompany those parishes—the first diocesan school system.
His fluency in languages served him well as he reached out to the various immigrant populations in Philadelphia. He even learned Gaelic in order to hear confessions of Irish people—he learned it so well that some mistakenly thought that he was a native speaker and proclaimed their pride in having an Irish bishop! He also gathered Italian immigrants for regular Mass in his own private chapel. As that community swelled, he established the first Italian national parish for them.
John was known for his simplicity. When he came in from the rain one day, his host told him he should change his soaking boots, but John replied that the only way to do so would be to put his left boot on his right foot—he only owned one pair.
As shepherd to a largely immigrant diocese, John bore the weight of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic social forces of the time. He once wrote to Rome, asking to be relieved of his position, but the pope encouraged him to stay on, which he did. John enlisted the help of other religious orders to serve the social and educational needs of his diocese and a number of communities of religious sisters received his support for their help.
John died on this date in 1860 when he collapsed from a stroke while out running errands. He was only 48 years old. People immediately began to venerate his remains, and miracles were attributed to his intercession. He was beatified in 1963 and canonized in 1977, and his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. His mitre, pictured above, rests in a display case in the Basilica museum. (Note: St. John Neumann is not to be confused with St. John Henry Newman, the English intellectual.)
St. John Neumann, you established the first diocesan education system to serve new American immigrants, pray for us!