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.
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