3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025 - Discovering ourselves through God's Words

 After having fasted and prayed for 40 days in the desert and facing the temptations of the devil, Jesus traveled to the synagogue of his hometown at the beginning of his public ministry. And there, as we heard in the Gospel today, the Lord read from the scriptures, a passage from the prophet Isaiah about the miracles that would accompany the arrival of the Messiah. 

Certainly, this is a fitting scripture passage for this particular weekend, as, a number of years ago now, Pope Francis designated the third Sunday of Ordinary Time as Word of God Sunday. We hear of Jesus himself reading from the Word of God. 

The scriptures play an important role in the life and ministry of Jesus. Again, as we heard today, he read and quoted from them publicly, as we do, every time we celebrate any of the Church’s liturgies. The Lord was raised in a family which cherished and lived out God’s word. The Holy Family celebrated the feasts prescribed by the scriptures, they adhered to the moral teachings found in its pages, they looked forward to the fulfillment of the prophecies of scripture, and they recited its beautiful poetry prayerfully in different moments of their lives.

Recall how Mary, upon visiting Elizabeth recited a lengthy passage of scripture, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, for he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly”. Our Lady was reciting by heart a passage of the first book of Samuel—when Samuel’s mother, Hannah, praised God when she discovered she had been blessed with child after a period of barrenness. 

Jesus spoke about the scriptures in the course of his ministry, and he assumed that his audience was familiar with the Scriptures. On the Sermon on the Mount he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven” 

So our Lord was immersed in Scripture, his family recited it, he recited it. The scriptures were the lens through which God’s people view the world, view history, and understand themselves and who they are called to be. 

Knowing this, it is not surprising to hear of our Lord opening the book of the prophet Isaiah in today’s Gospel, and explaining to people how this Scripture applied to what he was doing in their midst. 

Through the prophet Isaiah, God promised that there would be miraculous signs surrounding the coming of the Messiah: glad tidings would be preached to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of the sight to the blind. And in his hometown synagogue, Jesus makes the claim that those promises were being fulfilled in Him.

Jesus explains to the people that what they see him doing is a result of his faithfulness to his Father, in obedience to His Father. He is living out the vocation, if you will, of who he is, and the work he was sent to accomplish.

Jesus shows us that the purpose of our existence is to live out God’s plan for us. This is what Jesus did…he lived out his Father’s plan for him to preach the Good News and to save us from our sins through his suffering, death, and resurrection. And the Word of God is clear, this is the vocation of every Christian: to live out God’s plan for our lives.

If the Word of God explains to us who we are and who we are meant to be, the big question is, are you doing that?  Are you pursuing the person God made you to be? Are you becoming the person that you hoped you would become—that God hopes you will become? Are the choices that you’ve been making lately helping you to develop your mind, your heart, and your soul?

In thinking of my own priestly calling, and I think I speak for most priests here, that our priestly calling never came in the form of a clear, undeniable message from God that his plan was that we should become a priest.

Rather, the priestly calling came as a result of listening to God’s Word and discerning how I could best pursue its promises. My own calling came at a point in my life when I was really trying to figure out how can I pursue the things of God,  And that question, led me to the seminary, where I was able to pursue God—in prayer, study, and service.

I can even tell you one of the scripture passages that led me to even begin asking that question. In Romans chapter 12, St. Paul says, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” And where do we find what is good and pleasing and perfect? The Word of God. Read the Word of God. Meditate upon it, consider what it means for the direction of your life, the choices you are making, the way you are treating people. The Word of God enables you to discern the will of God for your life. 

This is no doubt, why so many people in our modern age wander aimlessly, from empty pursuit to empty pursuit. It’s because they have not taken the Word of God seriously—so many are biblically illiterate. They have no power to discern God’s will over their own because they unaccustomed to the divine logic found in the pages of Sacred Scripture.

In the first reading, Ezra the priest, read the scriptures to a group of Jews who only just returned from exile. For over a hundred years, the Jews had lived and worked in Babylonian Exile. There, you can be sure that they did not have the opportunity to read or hear from their scriptures. They were cut off from their traditions, their history, their rituals, and their stories. They didn’t know who they were, or who God called them to be. They grew up only knowing the false gods and practices of Babylon—a culture which practiced child sacrifice, polygamy, and other corrupt practices.

Well, after a hundred years, God saw to their deliverance from Babylon. But returning to Jerusalem, what they found broke their hearts. They found Jerusalem, the once great city of God—devastated—the walls breached and broken, the great temple destroyed.

But then we hear of Ezra, gathering the men, women, and children. And he begins to read to them from the Word of God. He stood on a raised platform, and from morning until midday Ezra read the Torah from beginning to end:  Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.  For hours and hours the men, women, and children listened to their story, their family history, the laws which God had given them. They raised their hands in the air, and proclaimed, “Amen, Amen”.  And they bowed down to the ground and wept discovering who they were for the first time: they were the people chosen by God to manifest his greatness.

The story of Ezra and the people of Israel reconnecting with the scriptures, is a wonderful image of what the Church does every time we gather for public worship and the role of the scriptures in our private lives and our families. They help us rediscover every week, every time we open them, to who we are, and who God made us to be.

May we, in the words of St. Augustine, tolle et lege, take up and read, meditating upon its words day and night, that we may prosper in the sight of God, and discover his vocation and love for each of us, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Homily: 2nd Sunday in OT 2017 - "Renamed and Called"

The Christmas season has ended, and we’ve returned to the observance of Ordinary Time. Each of the seasons of the Church year certainly has their own spirituality and themes.

During Advent, we reflect on the coming of Christ: our lives are meant to take a quieter mood, a reflective mood, meditating, anticipating Christ’s coming, like Mary anticipating the birth of her son. During Christmas of course we celebrate his birth with hymns of praise, we consider how our lives are called to be filled with the light and beauty and splendor of his presence.

Lent, which we will begins on Ash Wednesday, March 1st, this year, is a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, concrete acts of penance; we unite ourselves to Jesus in the desert, Jesus in his Passion and suffering on the cross, we meditate on his great love for us in what he suffered.
Then during Easter, we of course celebrate the Resurrection; we focus on being free from all that keeps us from proclaiming and living Christ’s victory over sin and death.

But during Ordinary Time, we focus on the ordinary life of the Christian, which is really an extraordinary thing, when you think about it. For the Christian is certainly called to live an extraordinary life. The life of sin is what’s ordinary; following the whims of the culture, giving in to every passing fancy, every disordered desire. The life of the Christian, however, is out-of-the-ordinary: the Christian lives conscious of the presence of God in our lives, conscious of God’s moral law, the commandments, the virtues, the examples of the saints, the power of the sacraments. The Christian life is an extraordinary calling to the life of grace and holiness and charity
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Though we are in Ordinary Time, Mass began today with an extra-ordinary ritual. In the rite of Acceptance and Welcoming. Geoff, Michael, Amanda, Megan, and Jennifer, stood before you today, publicly declaring their desire to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. Though they were baptized into different protestant denominations, they seek the extraordinary. They publicly declared, “what you Catholics believe, I want to believe”, “what you Catholics do, I want to do”, “the Sacraments that you Catholics receive, I want to receive”, how extraordinary!  We also had three others, Tawny, Karie, and Jodie, Catholics who declared their desire to complete their Sacraments of initiation. If you are a Catholic who hasn’t received the Sacrament of Confirmation, please contact the office, so that you can undergo preparation to receive this powerful sacrament which completes baptismal grace.

I’d like to turn our attention to the second reading today, simply to the opening line, the beginning of Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. There is something in Paul’s address that sums up, in a very simple way, what the ordinary life of the Christian is all about. Paul begins his letter in an ordinary way, a way that was typical to letters of the 1st century.

He introduces himself as Paul. We know that Paul he was born with a different name, with the name of Saul. And that the name of Paul is a new name, a new name he received when he began the new life of a Christian, a believer in Christ-crucified-and-risen. This change of name is consistent with the ancient biblical phenomenon of receiving a new name from God, when God calls you to something new.

For example, Abram, when called by God to become the Father of a New Nation, is given the new name, Abraham. Jacob’s name was changed, after wrestling with God, to identify him as a patriarch of the people of Israel, who would so often wrestle with remaining faithful to God and understanding the ways of God.

Jesus renamed Simon son of John as Peter, prince of the apostles, the rock upon whom Jesus would build his Church. And here in our second reading, Paul introduces himself by this new name, acknowledging that he has begun a new way of life, an extraordinary way of life, under the discipleship of Jesus Christ in union with his Holy Church.

At the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, we Catholics choose new names, to identify ourselves as new creations through the grace of the Sacraments. In many religious orders, a new name is given, when the person enters the order, and of course the Popes continue this practice as well; Jorge Bergolio took the new name of Francis, when he became successor of St. Peter, Bishop of Rome, Pope of the Holy Catholic Church.

This renaming is to help us realize that once we have encountered the Lord, that changes us. Once we receive a calling from God, that changes the direction of our life. Becoming a Catholic requires change. Going to confession, requires the repentance of sin and also the desire and intention to change. The Ordinary Life of the Catholic involves openness to change. We dispose ourselves to the grace of the Sacraments so that we can grow in holiness, we can love our neighbor, we can love our enemy a little more. Hopefully, each of us has changed for the better since this time last year. If not, we need to do some serious soul-searching and make more frequent use of the Sacrament of Confession.

This new name, this new identify, is a discovery of our truest self. The great theologian Hans Urs Van Balthasar said, “you do not know who you are, until you find yourself in Christ.” Before that, you have some identify, but it’s not your truest identity. The attachment to worldly ways and worldly philosophies and worldly errors, that’s not who we are meant to be. We are meant to be people of light, people of goodness, people of truth, and to be Christian is to acknowledge that only as a disciple of Him can I discover what it means to be truly good and truly happy; only in Christ can I become my truest self.

So much of our unhappiness in life is caused by not knowing who we are meant to be, not knowing the point of our suffering. We do well from time to time to reorient ourselves with what it really means to be a Christian. Am I truly allowing my Christianity to permeate every dimension of my life?

Now listen to how Paul introduces himself, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”. He identifies himself in the passive voice, “called to be an apostle” by someone else. How does modern man explain himself? “I’m my own man, It’s my life, my decision, my projects, get out of my way.” Paul has tapped into a different way; he’s discovered that happiness and fulfillment aren’t obtained simply by being a self-determined person.

The Christian receives his identity, he receives his faith, he receives his moral compass, from a higher authority than ourselves. As Christians we don’t determine right and wrong for ourselves. We don’t determine the ways our rituals are celebrated, we don’t determine what is true and what is false. This disposition of receptivity is fundamental, for without it how can we receive the gift of life which we lost through sin?

Paul writes to the Church who he says is “called to be holy”. May we strive to be worthy of that calling, faithful to that calling. May the Holy Spirit help us identify those parts in our lives we have yet to conform to the grace and truth of God, and may that grace continue to renew, reshape, and reform us, to become the people God made us to be, for the Glory of God and salvation of souls.