THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
24 JANUARY 2016
Ezra
the priest and Nehemiah the governor tell their people that they should not be
sad and that they should rejoice and feast on rich foods. The people need to hear these words, because
they are in a desperate situation. They
had just returned from fifty years of captivity in Babylon. Most of them had never been to
Jerusalem. They had only heard about it
from their parents. Now, they are facing
a very different reality. The
Babylonians had breached the walls that had protected their beloved city. They are facing the difficult task of
rebuilding the walls and the Temple. Ezra reads from the Law of the Lord to
encourage their work of reestablishing their physical identity. Now we have had some long-winded associate
priests in my time here. But none have
ever preached from dawn until mid-day!
But that is what Ezra does! He
reads from the Scrolls of the Torah –the first five books of the Bible – to
help the people recover their connection with the God who restores them and
their social connection with each other as members of the Covenant, originally
sealed through Moses. Ezra and Nehemiah
remind the people that God has never forgotten them, even though their parents
had forgotten God.
Centuries
later, Jesus comes home to Nazareth and opens another one of the scrolls of
God’s Word, deliberately choosing the Prophet Isaiah. Like Ezra and Nehemiah, Isaiah had told his
people that God had not forgotten them, even when their bad choices had caused
their exile. Isaiah promises that God
would recognize them in their poverty, that he would free those held in
captivity, that he would restore sight to the blind, free the oppressed, and
that he would proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. To the utter astonishment of the
congregation, Jesus announces that “today, this Scripture passage is fulfilled
in your hearing.”
The Gospel
of Luke is not a history lesson, but the living Word of God through which Jesus
speaks to us here and now. During this
Liturgical Year, we will hear the Gospel of Saint Luke on most Sundays, opening
our hearts to reflect on the Lord’s presence in our daily lives. Jesus invites us to be mindful of the poor in
our world. He wants us to trust that he
can free us from whatever binds us and keeps us from reaching out in love to
others. He can open our eyes to see his
presence in those around us, especially in those who annoy us and are difficult.
We can do these things, because the same Spirit that empowered Jesus empowers
us to live as his Body in our world. As
Saint Paul reminds us, each of us has a part in this Mystical Body. Each of us contributes to the working of this
Body, even when we are tempted to consider our actions and our gifts do not
matter.
When Isaiah
speaks of a year acceptable to the Lord, he is speaking of a Jubilee Year, a year
in which debts are erased and people are given a fresh start. Pope Francis has declared this year a Jubilee
Year, a special year focused on God’s Mercy.
In declaring this Year of Mercy, Pope Francis does not imply that there
is no right or wrong. He is not changing
the moral teachings of the Church. Those
moral teachings are intended to prevent our making choices that cause the exile
and suffering faced by the people addressed by Ezra and Nehemiah. Instead, he encourages us to face the ways in
which we have not taken our place as members of the Body of Christ. He wants us to be honest about how we have
ignored the poor or caused damage to other members, especially in our families,
in the places where we work, and in our parish.
Embraced by God’s limitless mercy, we can open our blind eyes to see the
wounds we have caused and make a new beginning.
Once we become more aware of God’s mercy in our own lives, we can give
it more freely to those who have wounded us.
In accepting and giving God’s mercy, those words of Jesus are being
fulfilled, here and now, in our midst, in this Jubilee Year of Mercy.
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