Homily:
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Friends,
if you heard or read my homily from last weekend, you’ll know that jumping back
into Ordinary Time has always proven difficult for me. This is because Ordinary Time always askes us
to take a hard look at our discipleship and to work on making continuous
improvements to it. In other seasons—you
know, Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter—the things that we are called to focus
on are spelled out for us and so it makes entering into that time a little
easier. In Ordinary Time we have to be
more “self-starting”, so to speak, which is harder: thus, why I don’t like it
as much.
You’ll
remember that I also said that, this year, I have decided to make this Ordinary
Time different: that is, that I was going to strive to be intentional about
engaging this time and seek some specific ways that I can grow and improve in
my discipleship and that I was going to try and let our liturgy lead me. Specifically, I am going to pay attention to
the message that comes to us through the scriptures we read at Mass and allow
them to propose one thing for me to work on each week. Last week, I focused in on John the Baptist’s
prophetic proclamation: “Behold, the Lamb of God…” I decided to do a better job of “beholding” Jesus
throughout the week. The task was easy
enough to remember (I just had to remember the word, “behold”), but the work
was hard. Nonetheless, I felt that I
was, indeed, more intentional about “beholding” Jesus when I read the
scriptures in my morning prayer time, during Eucharistic Adoration this past
Wednesday evening, and in the people with whom I interacted throughout the
week. And it was good! It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good start
and I intend to continue even as I look this week to the “one thing” that our liturgy
reveals to me.
This
week, the “thing” that the liturgy is revealing has been handed to us on a platter,
of sorts. That’s because this Sunday is
the first “Sunday of the Word of God”, which Pope Francis inaugurated last
year. The Holy Father has called for
this special celebration in order to enshrine a celebration which commemorates
the unbreakable bond between sacred Scripture and the Eucharist. In calling for this celebration, Pope Francis
hopes to inspire all of us to know our Lord better through our prayerful
reading and study of sacred Scripture.
Last week, when speaking of beholding Jesus in the Scriptures, I said
that one of my seminary professors always reminded us that “an encounter with the
Scriptures is an encounter with Christ” and so I’m grateful for this
celebration which reinforces that notion and calls us all to seek our Lord
Jesus in the word of God, preserved for us in these Scriptures.
Before
I go any further, I’d like to point out that one of the things that celebrating
this Sunday as the Word of God Sunday highlights about us is that the Catholic
Church is truly a “Bible Church”. If you
talk to other non-Catholic Christians, many will ask, “Is your church a ‘bible church’?”,
meaning, “Do they believe in the Bible as the sacred word of God and as
authoritative?” As Catholics, we better
all (that is, each one of us) and always say, “YES! The Catholic Church is a Bible Church. In fact, it is THE BIBLE CHURCH, since without the Catholic Church, there
would be no Bible!” In fact, the very
fabric of the Mass that we celebrate is the Holy Word of God. Don’t believe me? Read Scott Hahn’s book, The Lamb’s Supper, and he’ll show you just how deep of a foundation
sacred Scripture is for the Mass. In
celebrating this Sunday as “Word of God Sunday” we are boldly proclaiming to
the world that we hold in veneration the Holy Word of God as God’s authoritative
word to us.
Nonetheless,
I think that there is still a more particular message for us in today’s readings
that can be the thing that guides our work as disciples this week, and it is
this: the Word of God is both the record of God’s promises to us and the evidence
of their fulfillment. In our first reading today, we heard from the prophet
Isaiah, who is speaking to the people of the northern kingdoms of the tribes of
Israel—those who had been exiled after being conquered by the Assyrians—and he
is promising them that the Lord, who allowed them to fall into this suffering
because of their sins, will now return to redeem them from their suffering. And they did return. Unfortunately, however, they would once again
fall into exile under the Babylonians, highlighting that the redemption the
Lord had worked for them was partial: that is, that it wasn’t the full
redemption of mankind that God had promised from the Garden of Eden, but rather
the partial redemption that brought them back from exile to their homeland so
that they might begin again.
Nevertheless,
Saint Matthew, the evangelist, references this prophecy from Isaiah when he
describes the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in our Gospel reading today
so as to indicate that what had been partially redeemed before was now about to
find its fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus,
himself, perhaps never said that he left Nazareth to live in Capernaum when he
began his public ministry so as to fulfill what had been said through Isaiah
the prophet, but Matthew nonetheless saw that move as intentional and, through
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, interpreted it as such. And this was Jesus’ way, right? He never said, “Look at me, I’m the Messiah,
come and worship me!” Rather, he
preached the kingdom and performed the signs of the kingdom (healing, driving
out demons, etc.) and then said, “Look at the works I do. If you know the Scriptures, you’ll know what
that means about who I am. If you
believe, come follow me.”
This
“M.O.” of Jesus is exactly why we need to take for our work this week a deeper
reading and study of the sacred Scriptures.
In order to see the events that happen in our lives and understand how
it is God who is both speaking to us through them and, more importantly, fulfilling
his promises to us, we need to be immersed in study of those ancient promises
and of how they were fulfilled in Christ.
Still further, we need to see in the Scriptures how that fulfillment was
entrusted to the Church so as to make it living and present to every succeeding
generation. It’s pretty rare that God
himself will announce, “See this is how I’m fulfilling my promises right now.” Most common, rather, is for God to work,
using his familiar signs, but without much fanfare, and our job is to recognize
those signs and then to respond in kind.
Reading and studying the Scriptures is a primary way that we prepare to
do that.
Therefore,
my friends, as we celebrate the Word of God this weekend, and as we offer this
sacrifice of thanksgiving to God for it, let us make a modest, yet firm
commitment to engage God’s Word in the sacred Scriptures daily: allowing us to “behold”
Jesus for a time while also reminding us of God’s promises and of Jesus, who has
brought all of those promises to fulfillment: the fullest evidence of which
will soon be made present to us on this altar.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – January 25th
& 26th, 2020
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