Over in the school these past two weeks, I’ve finally had the
opportunity to do a little teaching. I’ve visited each of the grades now, and I
taught a lesson for each of them on the liturgical year: how the seasons of the
Church year celebrate the different seasons of Jesus’ life so we can follow
Jesus more faithfully. So I reviewed with them how Advent and Christmas helps
us to prepare our hearts to believe in Jesus and love Him, and how now in
Ordinary Time we hear about many of the wonderful miracles Jesus performed and his
preaching and teaching about the Kingdom of God. Again, Ordinary Time helps us
to put the lessons of Jesus’ miracles and preaching into practice into the ordinary
events of our life.
Last Sunday, those who braved the snow and cold, heard of Jesus’
first miracle: his miracle at the Wedding at Cana—how Jesus changed water into
wine at the urging of his mother. We, like the servants at the wedding, should,
as Jesus’ mother teaches us, to do whatever he tells us. And like the disciples
who witnessed the miracle, we are to glorify God for the amazing things Jesus
does in our lives.
And now this weekend, we hear Jesus’ very first homily
recorded in Luke’s Gospel. Emerging from the desert, having fasted and prayed for
40 days and having faced the temptations of the devil, Jesus goes to the
synogogue in his native place, Nazareth. There Jesus reads from the scripture
and teaches people what God is doing in their midst. Jesus explained how those
ancient prophecies of Isaiah were being fulfilled in their midst. God promised
that He would bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of
sight to the blind. And Jesus make the amazing claim that those promises were
being fulfilled in Him.
Well, what does this event in the life of Jesus mean for our
Ordinary day to day lives?
In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI asks this
question another way. He asks “What did Jesus actually bring us?” We still have
wars. We still have famine. People still suffer. People still get sick and die.
So what did Jesus actually bring? And Pope Benedict answers the question by
saying: “Jesus brought us God. Jesus brings us God.”
Jesus is much more than a social worker. He’s not just a
nice guy who came to teach us a few useful things about living together in
harmony. He’s not just a philosopher who gives us a theory about life, the
universe, and everything. He’s not just a politician who promises to fulfill
every wish we could ever have.
Jesus brings us something that nothing else and no one else
on earth can give: the gift of God Himself. Jesus is God, and Jesus is God’s
gift of Himself to Us who need Him. Only God can give us the liberty we need to
truly be free. Only God can forgive sins. Only God can give us the gift of eternal
life. Only God can give us the good news that changes our life from the core. Jesus
shows us the face of God. Jesus reveals the heart of God. Jesus brings us God.
For He is Truly God who gives Himself that we may have life.
One of the errors of our modern day is that we think we can
save ourselves, that we don’t need God, we can do it on our own. If we just
elect the right politicians. If just enact the right law. If we just force
everyone to adopt the right set of public policies, if we just get the right
sized house or the right amount of cash in the savings account, if we just
outlaw certain “triggering” words, then we’ll be free…then we’ll be happy.
This attempt to save ourselves—this belief that we can live
rightly without God—is a symptom of the deepest soul sickness, going all the
way back to the garden of eden, when adam and eve grasped at a reality divorced
from God. They chose to ignore God’s command, to ignore God’s plan for
humanity. And each one of us does the same when we choose sin over
faithfulness.
And the wars, the violence, the hostility between men and
women, the brokenness in families, the addictions,
the penchant for self-destruction is a result of this attempt to build a life
and build a world without God. Who will save us from this? Who will save us
from the tendency of “not doing the good we want to do, and doing the evil we
don’t want to do” as St. paul says? Who will give us the strength to be able to
love one another as deeply as we yearn to do? Who will teach us what humanity
is meant to be? Who will reconcile us? Who will bring us peace? Jesus “Jesus
brought us God. Jesus brings us God.”
In our first reading, we heard a foreshadowing of this amazing
truth. From the book of Nehemiah we heard how the Jews fell face-down and wept
when the priest read to them from God’s Word. 70 years they had been captive in
Babylon. An entire generation did not know God, they did not know the promises
of God, they did not know the commandments of God that help us to live a holy
life. And they wept when they discovered what God wanted for them, they wept
when they discovered that they were not created to be captives to the powers of
the world, they wept when they learned they were created to be God’s chosen
people, chosen by God to manifest His goodness, his truth, his beauty, his
light.
And the Jewish people had this reaction simply from reading from
the first five books of the Old Testament. What should our reaction be, how
immense should our gratitude be, to come here, and to receive the very gift of
God, the body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior in the Eucharist. I
have known Catholics, similarly to break down and weep in gratitude after encountering
Jesus in the confessional, they weep to discover that their sins are forgiven.
This, too, is why daily prayer and daily reading of the Word
of God is so important. Because daily we, God’s chosen people are meant to
encounter him, to open our hearts and minds to him. We are meant to prayerfully
encounter the God who desires to free us, to illuminate us, to guide us in
being his holy people, members of his mystical body tasked at manifesting his
goodness, his life, his beauty, his truth in the ordinary circumstances of our
lives, and bringing sight, freedom, good tiding to those in need of it, for the
glory of God and salvation of souls.
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