As I shared last month, I have been on a several year journey towards becoming a Deacon in the Catholic Church. While I still have a little less than a year to go, our formation program has called us to begin writing homilies, or reflections on specific Sunday readings. This first reflection is based on this past Sunday, February 3rd, the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time. The Sunday Readings are: Jer. 1: 4-5, 17-19; Psalm 71: 1-6, 15-17; 1 Cor. 12:31-13:13; and Lk. 4: 21-30
After hearing today’s Gospel reading from Luke, it goes without saying that Jesus has touched a chord or two. So as Catholic Christians, with Christ as our role model, and today’s readings as our motivation, let’s cut to the chase… We must be willing to take on the qualities of the Prophets, and LIVE this faith of ours out loud NOW, and live it for all to see and hear! But be warned. It’s certainly not going to be easy. So stand firm and be willing to stretch your comfort zone… A lot!
In his 1975 Encyclical On Evangelization in the Modern World, Pope Paul VI challenged all the faithful noting that, "every evangelizer is expected to have reverence for the truth" and that, "the preacher of the Gospel [that's you and me] will therefore be a person who even at the price of personal renunciation and suffering, always seeks the truth that he must transmit to others." In 1962, his predecessor, Blessed John XXIII, opened the Second Vatican Council with his encyclical,"Mother Church Rejoices”, challenging the church not to be "prophets of doom", but rather, we are called to share the Theological Virtues of faith, hope and charity, continuing to fill the world with faith, bringing real hope to people in need, revealing Christ’s love and promise of eternal life!
Today, in our Scriptures, we meet the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called by God in the year 627 BC to proclaim God’s word for what ended up being more than 40 years. In the first reading, we hear the Lord say to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” (Jer. 1: 4-5). Jeremiah had a hunch that things would be challenging, as his initial response to the call was, “Ah, Lord God... I do not know how to speak. I am too young!” (Jer. 1:6) But the Lord answered him saying, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak.” (Jer. 1:7) This first reading focuses on just how the Lord confirms Jeremiah’s hunch, as He goes on to promise that things will not be easy, for knowing that he will be misunderstood, rejected, persecuted, and maybe even killed; he should also be reassured and encouraged to stand firm, knowing that the Lord will be there with him to deliver him!
The second reading, from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians contains the very familiar verses, “love is patient, love is kind” (1 Cor. 13:4), and, “faith, hope and love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13: 13) But in our ability to recognize the familiar, let us not overlook the very first verse, as St. Paul says, “Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts,” (1 Cor. 12:31) offering the people of Corinth, and all of us assembled here today “a more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31) of using our individual lives to help and support the community, or the “Body of Christ”. St. Paul also had a hunch of his own for the people of Corinth, who were already divided into factions, and classes, and different ways of life, needed motivation to strive for something more than just fame, fortune and comfort. They needed these spiritual gifts to make them whole, and they needed to stand firm in the face of the many temptations that accompanied their way of life. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, specifically echoes Paul’s challenge in his Encyclical God is Love when he writes that “faith, hope and charity go together.” He says that, “hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God’s mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.” Like the city of Corinth, our society too has many selfish temptations that disrupt the nature of being one with the Lord, and one with the community. If we are to accept the call of living the life of a prophet, then we are called to live out loud, the virtues of patience, humility, and trust, modeling true faith, for as the Holy Father says, “faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that… God is love!”
This brings us back to today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, and the example we have in Christ, to embody the role of a prophet! God’s will is truly fulfilled in Jesus’ reading from the Scroll of Isaiah, and all seemed proud and “spoke highly of him” (Lk. 4:21) , but Jesus’ message quickly becomes a resounding call for real work and real change from the people of God! Moreover, Christ breaks with expectation, as he is not just the son of a carpenter, but also one who now dares to claim his authoritative place in the line of two other Prophets, Elijah and Elisha. The result… The hometown crowd, who thinks they knew Jesus’ role as their future town wood-worker, quickly turns into a mob that wants him dead, for who was he to speak for God without THEIR permission.
In a few moments, we will gather around the Altar, offering our gifts of bread and wine, so that they can become the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our prayer will ask that these “offerings of our service” be transformed into the “Sacrament of our redemption.” (Roman Missal – Prayer Over the Offerings – 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time) May this nourishment give us the strength to truly be the person, and maybe even prophet that the Lord has known, even since before we were formed in the womb. The Babylonian Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who lived during the beginning years of Christ’s life on earth from the year 30 BCE until around 10 CE is credited with saying, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” We are the one’s called to live and speak the Truth, and we are the ones who must continue to strive eagerly for spiritual gifts, so that we are whole as the Body of Christ, but like the Prophet Jeremiah, please be reassured, “They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.” (Jer. 1:19)
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