What Good is the Word?

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time–Sunday of the Word of God

    This year, Pope Francis has inaugurated a new focus for this third Sunday of Ordinary Time.  He has decreed that the third Sunday of Ordinary Time is especially to be centered on the Word of God.  In his Apostolic Letter that created this celebration, Pope Francis writes, “without the Scriptures, the events of the mission of Jesus and of his Church in this world would remain incomprehensible.  Hence, Saint Jerome could rightly claim: ‘Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.’”
    For Catholics, especially of a particular age, the Scriptures may be a bit foreign.  Indeed, some of you have even told me that, while growing up, you were discouraged by priests, nuns, and others, from reading the Word of God.  While we do have some active Bible study groups here, some of you may be thinking: what good would it do me to read the Bible more?  I’ve gotten along without it just fine for this long!
    The Word of God, as divinely revealed in Sacred Scripture, and faithfully communicated and interpreted through the teaching of the Church, is meant to be the guide for our life.  In the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, entitled Dei Verbum, of the Second Vatican Council, the Church teaches:

both [sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture], flowing from the same divine wellspring…merge into a unity and tend toward the same end.  For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve the word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. […] Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.

When we sang, with the Psalmist, “The Lord is my light and my salvation,” what we were saying is that the Lord illuminates the path that I am to take towards heaven.  The Word of God gives us a great light, whereas without it we walk in darkness.  It brings us “abundant joy and great rejoicing.”  It gives us freedom from the yoke of sin that burdens us.
    The Word of God is also meant to bring about the unity of Jesus’ followers, and all those who are created in the image and likeness of God.  Humanity tends towards disunity; it is, we might say, the communal law of entropy.  Even in St. Paul’s time, he writes that divisions are creeping in among the Christians of Corinth: “each of you is saying, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’”  When we are left to our own machinations, we tend to divide.  The Word of God, given to us through Sacred Scripture and faithfully interpreted by the teaching office of the Church, holds together what Satan wants to sift apart.
    Lastly, as we hear from our Gospel today, the Word of God calls us on to mission.  Jesus, the eternal Word (in Greek: Logos) of God the Father, calls the first apostles, Simon and Andrew, and also James and John, and invites them to follow Him, so that He might make them “fishers of men.”  It’s not as if the Word of God is meant to stay stagnant in our lives.  It is meant to change us, and to urge us on to making other disciples.  If our engagement with the Word of God doesn’t draw us to make other disciples, then we’re not getting all that God wants to share with us through His Word.
    Now, I know, those are a lot of high-level ideals.  But does the Word of God make a difference in my real life?  It can, if we are open to its effects.  In the first way, it helps us to make decisions on how we spend our time and money, helps us to know how to interact with others, and assists us in making both big life decisions and the smaller daily decisions by shining the light of Christ on the path we are seeking to travel, to see if it’s a good path or a dangerous path.
    In the second case, there are a lot of people who claim to follow Jesus, but the Word of God can help us evaluate whether their encouragements of what to believe and how to live are truly from God and live up to His wisdom, as expressed in Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church.  Both are necessary, as we see Christian communities who were historically founded on the Scriptures as the only rule of faith, now allowing and sometimes even promoting activities which are in direct contradiction to the Sacred Scripture.  We avoid division by staying faithful to the Word of God as expressed in the Bible and faithfully interpreted by the apostles and their successors, the bishops, teaching in union with the Pope. 
    In the third case, the more that we hear the Good News expressed in the Word of God–that God loves us, God has a plan for us, God forgives us, God has saved and is saving us–the more we want others to hear that news.  Bible studies cannot be ends in themselves, but should push us to share with our family and friends and neighbors that Good News, and how following God can change our lives for the better. 
    Today God reminds us that His Word is light, unity, and mission.  May our hearing of the Word of God, and our daily engagement with it, bring that light, unity, and mission to our lives, that we may share that light, unity, and mission with those that we encounter each day.

Car, Cash, or Caribbean

Easter Sunday

           

What if I told you that if you sat in the front row, on the aisle seat, you won a car valued at $4 million, no strings attached, no taxes, no nothing.  Or that if you sat in pews to my right, you won $300 million?  Or that just by coming today you had each won your own island in the Caribbean with white, sandy beaches, a fully furnished house, and a private jet to get you there?  I’m willing to bet you would be pretty excited!  I know I would be.  After this winter, what I wouldn’t give for my own Caribbean island just to relax in the sun!!

            Now, the bad news is that I’m not actually giving those things away (no surprise there!).  The good news is that we have received something better, something upon which no price can be put.  And that, of course, is eternal salvation.  What we celebrate today, along with every Sunday, is that sin and death, which had ruled ever since Adam, was defeated by Jesus Christ.  How on God’s green earth is that better news than cars, millions of dollars or our own tropical paradise?  All those things will pass away.  But life after death is forever, one way or another.

            How do we live so as to show that we treasure this gift of new life?  How does Easter make us different?  If I had a $4 million dollar car, there are things I would do differently in my life: I’d probably spend more time caring for my car than I do now; I would certainly never drive it in the snow, which means that in Michigan, I wouldn’t drive it from November until May, it seems like.  If I had $300 million dollars, my life would be radically different, too.  Besides friends I haven’t talked to since high school coming out of the woodwork to hit me up for a little financial help, I’d have to spend a lot of time trying to decide how best to use my new fortune to take care of my own needs, and to share it with others.  If I had my own Caribbean island with private jet, you can bet that I would spend my time there…a lot…especially in the winter!!  Having those things changes the way we live our life.  So sharing in the great gift of the Resurrection should change the way we live our life.

            Part of that change is celebrating the Resurrection.  In the earliest days of the Church, Christians, who were mostly Jews, celebrated two days: Saturday (the Sabbath) and Sunday (the Day of the Resurrection).  They rested on the Sabbaths and early on went to the synagogue, because that’s what they were used to, and then on Sundays they gathered to celebrate that Jesus was risen from the dead, and would read from the prophets and celebrate the Eucharist.  They were so appreciative for the gift of eternal salvation that they wanted to celebrate, each 1^st day of the week, what happened on that momentous 1^st day of the week, when Jesus rose from the dead.  As Christianity split from Judaism, they stopped observing the Sabbath.  But they still held on to Sundays as a day of rejoicing in the Lord and fulfilling the Lord’s command at the Last Supper, to “do this in memory of me.”  Just as the first day in the first creation story was the beginning of creation, so the first day of the week, when Jesus rose from the dead, was the beginning of a new creation.

            I am overjoyed that we have a full church today!!  It is so much easier, and so much more invigorating to preach to a full church, even an overflowing church!!  With as many Catholics as there are in East Lansing, including the MSU students, each Mass should be full with Catholics celebrating the Resurrection!  I’m glad that you’re here with us to celebrate today.  Come back next week when we celebrate the Resurrection again.  And then a week after that we’ll celebrate it again!  And so on for each Sunday.  And even if you don’t quite have the same enthusiasm that you do today, I can promise that we’ll do all we can to help you, each week, to delve deeper and deeper into the great gift that we received from Jesus.

            But, of course, being a Catholic does not stop at these doors.  St. Paul, in our second reading, invites us to be a leaven for our world, not with the “old yeast of malice and wickedness, but the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”  Having come to the empty tomb like Mary Magdalene and Peter and John, we are then called to spread that news to others.  We do that by how we live our life in our actions.  We do that by telling people about Jesus, so that they come to join us.  If you had a $4 million car, or won $300 million dollars, or a Caribbean island, even if you were guarded with whom you told so as not to be taken advantage of, you would want to tell others.  Again, our gift is greater than all of those, and yet you’d think we’d just received the worst news ever, so bad that we don’t even want to acknowledge it to others and try not to let it affect us.  Tell people about Jesus.  Live according to the Gospel.  Those are signs that you are glad in the gift Jesus gave you.  And people need it, because they’re hungry for God and Good News and new life, and we’ve got it!  They are as hungry now as when St. Peter preached, what we heard in our first reading.  And thousands of people were baptized at the preaching of St. Peter!  God has given us the greatest gift in the Resurrection of Jesus.  This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad it in!!

Doers of the Word

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

            I’m sure this has never happened with anyone here, but imagine a scenario where a parent tells a child to do something while that child is doing something else like watching TV, or playing video games, reading, or texting.  Then imagine that, lo and behold, that child does not, in fact, do what the parent tells the child to do (I know, this must be shocking for you that this actually happens in some families).  The usual response from the parent would be some variation of, “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

            St. James tells us in the second reading, that we are to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.”  We have been blessed with the greatest message of all time.  It started in the Old Testament, with the message that God had chosen a people, and had cared for them and brought them to a land.  And, even after they were enslaved, God freed them and returned them to that land flowing with milk and honey.  He game them laws so that they might be just and upright, and know the good to do and the evil to avoid.  This is what Moses is talking about in the first reading.

            And even “when through disobedience [humanity] had lost [God’s] friendship, He did not abandon [us] to the domain of death…Time and again [God] offered them covenants and through the prophets taught [us] to look forward to salvation.”  And then, “in the fullness of time [God] sent [His] Only Begotten Son to be our Savior.  Made incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, he shared our human nature in all things but sin…To accomplish [God’s] plan, [Jesus] gave himself up to death, and, rising from the dead, he destroyed death and restored life.”  And the Church was formed, the New Israel, who was called to proclaim this Good News of the death and resurrection of Jesus, which saves us from our sins.  And, in response to this love first shown to us in God, the members of the Body of Christ are to configure themselves to Jesus, by the guidance of the teaching of the Apostles and their successors who continue the teaching of Jesus in new times and new circumstances.

            That is the Good News that we received.  That is the Good News that we are to proclaim.  But are we just hearers of the Word?  Does what Jesus said apply to us, too: “‘Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;’”?    Week after week we hear the Word of God and we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, our Savior.  But does it change us?  Has the Gospel penetrated our hearts?  In the movie “Godfather III,” the cardinal who hears Michael Corleone’s confession pulls a small rock out from a fountain of water.  It is wet, of course, on the outside.  But he breaks the rock in two, and the inside is dry.  He says that the people are like the rock in the fountain.  They have been surrounded by the water of Christianity for centuries, but Christ, like the water, has not penetrated them.  How many of us are surrounded by Christianity, but Christ has no penetrated us because we are hearers of the word only, and not doers?

            St. James tells us that if we are hearers only, and not doers, then we are deluding ourselves.  If we think that being surrounded by Christianity is enough, then we have truly not heard Jesus, just as the child did not truly hear its parent.  At our baptism, a solemn promise was made for us, if we were infants, or we made it for ourselves, if we were adults: that we would reject sin and Satan, that we would believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that we would raise the child in the faith, and practice it ourselves.  This is the same promise that these families will make today for their children.  We promised to be doers of the word.  God, for His part, promised to assist us in that promise with sacramental grace which would strengthen us to do what we cannot without His help.  Have we lived up to these promises?  Have we, in the ways we are able, changed the world to better reflect the Gospel?  Or have we tried to let the culture change the Gospel to better reflect our world?  Have we been the salt of the earth, preserving our corner of the world in holiness of life, of have we lost our flavor? 

            For months we have been hearing from politicians how they have the right policies that will bring America prosperity.  We will hear how they will do x, y, and z to protect the poor, defend life from natural conception to natural death, to turn the economy around, etc.  And politics certainly has a legitimate role to play in implementing the Gospel.  But, before that can be effective, we ourselves must be converted.  We must be doers of the word, and not hearers only.  Because if we are truly doers of the word then we ourselves will guard against greed and consumerism and will hold others to that as well.  If we are doers of the word then we will assist the poor, truly helping them to use the gifts God has given them for their benefit and the benefit of society.  If we are doers of the word then we will stand up for the rights of the defenseless infant in the womb from the moment of conception and the elderly who are sick, both of whom can easily be exploited because they are the weakest members of our society.  If we are doers of the word then we will stand up for religious freedom so that we can truly practice our faith in peace, and not be compelled to do anything which is against the teaching of Christ and His Church.  “Dearest brothers and sisters:…Be doers of the world and not hearers only.”