HOMILY SUNDAY 03 – C
Freedom through the Word
(Nehemiah 8:1-4a, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Cor 12:12-3-; Lk 1:1-4, 4:14-21)
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In the movie Lincoln, the cry for freedom is palpable. Lincoln himself, his secretary of State, and the black slaves in bondage hungered, thirsted and hoped for freedom from this oppression that was an insult to God who created all peoples equal. And finally, even before the Civil War ended, the emancipation amendment to the constitution was passed and freedom was granted with great celebration.
That same hunger and thirst for freedom is palpable in today’s Gospel. Jesus unrolled the scroll that was handed to him and found this passage from Isaiah. Jesus looked for this particular passage because it best expressed who he was and what he had come to accomplish as the long-awaited Messiah. What he had come to bring about was also freedom – freedom from spiritual poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression.
This celebration, and the readings we proclaim, are an invitation to us to put the Word of God at the centre of our lives that we might attain the freedom to live and love that God wants to give to us.
This is the beginning of the Gospel for Luke, and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and it begins with the announcement of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. This takes place in Nazareth, his home town, and in Galilee, where almost everything goes well for Jesus. Galilee is the place of miracles and multitudes for Jesus. He will fulfill this passage not on his own, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, pointing to the need for the Spirit in our lives as well.
We are invited to look into our own lives, to identify ways that we are poor, blind, captive, oppressed. Perhaps it is an addiction, a character defect, a particular weakness, a lack of awareness of part of our personality that may need healing, or a sin that may need forgiveness. We are invited, like the congregation in the synagogue that day to fix our eyes on Jesus, to believe in him as the Messiah who was to come, and as the Lord and Saviour who alone can truly set us free.
The first reading, in its own way, parallels the Gospel passage. Given our faith in Jesus as the Word of God made flesh, we can easily find the parallels in the reading from Nehemiah. Ezra, the priest and scribe, held up the book of the Law, which the people reverenced. They then listened attentively to it as it was read out loud and interpreted by the Levites. Standing and bowing, they submitted themselves to the Word of the Lord. In the end, they were moved and touched by that word, and instructed to celebrate that great event with joy and gladness, without any inappropriate sadness, for this was a joyous occasion.
This passage should actually shame many Catholic parents and families, who simply ignore the Word of God in their daily lives. So many do not even have a bible in their homes, or if they do, they rarely, if at all, read it, either alone, or as a family.
Yet Church leaders, from the pope on down, have over the years encouraged and strongly invited all the faithful to study, read and pray with the Word of God. There was even a synod on the Word Some years back in which bishops from around the world gathered in Rome to share on how the Word could be made more a part of the daily life of the Church.
Certainly, we should do our share to promote the reading of scripture. An excellent practice by some is to read one chapter of the bible each day. That is a practice I have been doing for years, sometimes getting a new, different version of the bible when I am done. I am almost finished reading the NRSV bible for the third time, according to my noting of the year I read any particular page. I was impressed by a one-hundred-year-old sister of St. Joseph in Peterborough, Ontario, who was reading the bible when I visited her room during a retreat that I was conducting for their community last October.
Ultimately, reading, studying and praying with the Word of God should deepen our faith in Jesus as the Messiah who came to fulfill all the prophecies of the Old Testament, and who came to set us free from whatever chains and shackles we may be bearing in our own lives.
The Eucharist is similar to the event in the dessert where Ezra held up the Book of the Law to be reverenced, and the Levites read it out loud with interpretation to give the sense of it to the people. We do the same as we enter into the liturgy of the word, and the proclamation of the gospel, where we stand out of reverence and cross ourselves that the Lord may be in our minds, lips and hearts as we listen attentively to God’s holy Word.
The Liturgy of the Eucharist that follows, in which humble gifts of bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, both sets us free from our sin and sinfulness, and empowers us to go out and spread the good news of salvation to all we meet.
So, remember that this celebration, and the readings we proclaim, are an invitation to us to put the Word of God at the centre of our lives that we might attain the freedom to live and love that God wants to give to us.
