Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 23, 2022: Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life...

Your words, Lord, are spirit and life…

Does the Word of God speak to your heart?

   Psalm 19 suggests that the people of Israel believed that the law of God, as inscribed in the five books of the Torah, enriched their lives and improved their understanding of their relationship with God and with each other. The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye, the psalmist sings; when properly interpreted, Scripture gives wisdom to the simple. Unfortunately, the community that gathers to hear Jesus in his hometown, Nazareth, has no interest in Jesus’ interpretation of the passage he presents to them. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Jesus reads in Luke’s Gospel, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. But his audience believes they have heard all they need to hear; once Jesus adds, Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing, they will make their rejection of him clear. They, like the Corinthians to whom Paul is writing, are too focused on themselves to understand the gifts they have been given, including the gift that is Christ, God’s Word itself; they will therefore remain at a distance from the Lord.

    Only the community described by Nehemiah seems ready to open fully to God’s words. When Ezra the priest reads out of the book of the law – the Torah – from daybreak to midday, all the people listen attentively. Indeed, they are so moved by the words of God that they weep with emotion. Ezra must interpret the law for then; like Luke the Evangelist, Ezra realizes that God’s words and Word need to be examined and understood anew in their context, and then expanded on, that all might integrate them into their daily life. This is precisely the function of the homily at Mass: to interpret God’s Word so that it makes sense to us in our time.

    Do we think about the prophecies of God being fulfilled in us now, because we are Body of Christ, united in his love, through one baptism? Can we hear God’s Word? That Word tells us who we have the potential to be, giving us hope. Prophecies are possibilities. We are commissioned at our baptism as priests, prophets and kings. As such, we must speak God’s Word, bringing glad tiding to poor, proclaiming liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and letting the oppressed go free… all of which is possible, if only the Word of God speaks to our hearts. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class. 
Image source:  www.wordclouds.com
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 27, 2019: Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life...

Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life…

How are we transformed by the Word of God?

  When, in the Book of Nehemiah, the priest Ezra brings the law before the assembly, he is in fact introducing his congregation to the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible that had been brought together by a priestly source while the people were in exile, a text they may never have heard before.  Upon hearing the words Ezra reads from the scroll and listening to his interpretation of God’s law, the people weep, recognizing themselves in the story of salvation history and their failures to follow through on the law.  But their tears are to give way to joy in response to the extraordinary gift God bestows upon them once again:  covenant relationship.  The reading of holy scripture seals their identity as a community that blesses the Lord and rejoices in his presence in their lives.  For them, it is truly as Psalm 19 suggests:  Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

  In Ezra’s time, as in Jesus’ time and in our own time, an absolute openness to God’s words is the purest state we can hope for, one in which we are willing to embrace God’s will, unhindered, with nothing standing in the way of our finding favor before the Lord.  Like Ezra, Jesus will stand before his own community in Nazareth, where he had grown up, and read from holy scripture. In Luke's Gospel, the text he proclaims, from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, announces his own identity and invites his listeners to a common identity with him:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor,… to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, he says.  The text from Isaiah suggests that, if the people believe in the Son of God, if they recognize that the Spirit of the Lord is indeed upon Jesus, then they will do as he does and God’s love will be manifest in their lives.  They will become, as St. Paul will later tell the Corinthians, one body, restored to proper relationship with God through their other-centered activity, belonging to one another, and to God. 

  Jesus is our Spirit and life; we are all called to drink of the one Spirit, listening intently to his words, that we might enter more profoundly into God’s love, into the depth of relationship he calls us to.  May God’s words rejoice our hearts as we embrace the love they communicate, open to the life God promises.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com