God's Word

This is my homily for today, the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.  The readings for today are here. 

As a note: Pope Francis has designated this Sunday each year to be celebrated as Sunday of the Word of God.  To celebrate it, we do a more elaborate Gospel procession, during which the deacon brings the Book of the Gospel from the altar, where it sits during the first part of mass, down into where the congregation is seated.  He processes up and down the aisles, with the book elevated.  Prior to the pandemic, we would have had altar servers bearing candles as part of the procession, but there were no servers at the masses I served at this weekend.  After the Gospel is proclaimed (from the ambo as usual), the Book of the Gospels is then 'enthroned' on a lectern facing the people, open to the Gospel passage of the day.

Here is the text of this weekend's homily.

Pope Francis has designated this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, as Sunday of the Word of God.  In that spirit, I’d like to say a few words about words.  

We come into this world without a vocabulary, and indeed our vocal apparatus and our brains haven’t developed sufficiently to form words.  But even young infants are perceptive, and their parents talk to them – and even though the babies are too young to comprehend exactly what is being said, child-development experts tell us that this business of parents talking to their infants is very important for the child’s development.  As babies’ brains and senses develop, they notice people and things and sensations and patterns.  Babies certainly know who their parents are, well before they are able to form and speak the words for Mom and Dad.  First comes the impression, then the concept, then the words.

Even as adults, we don’t stop this process of observing, and mentally conceiving, and then finding words for the concept.  When the attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001 took place, I spent that day gob-smacked.  Something momentous clearly had happened, but I didn’t quite have the words or terms available to describe what had happened.  Who had done this to us?  Why had they done it?  Had we done something to deserve it?  It took American society some time to sort through these questions and find the right words to explain what had happened that day.  Sometimes assigning the right word to an idea can be clarifying.  Assigning the term “terrorism” to the 9/11 attack helps crystalize in our minds what happened that day, and why.   When we are given the right word, our impressions and ideas sharpen and come into focus.  ‘A terrorist attack – that’s what that was.’

I’m offering these thoughts on the interplay between words and ideas because I think they’re pertinent to the person of Jesus, and how we get to know him.  You may know that John’s Gospel begins with the poetic proclamation, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  That is a surprising assertion: Jesus is the Word.  There are layers of meaning packed into that assertion.  To refer to Jesus as the Word tells us something about where Jesus came from: he came from the Father, just as words come from their speaker.  What’s more, words have meanings, they stand for ideas, and they communicate those meanings and ideas.  If Jesus is the Word, then Jesus himself has meaning, and he is communicating that meaning to us.

Jesus is the Word who clarifies who God is.  Even someone who has not learned much about God may intuit that, in the midst of all the hardness and coldness and unfairness in contemporary life, there are threads of goodness which can be discerned  For example: when I lived in Chicago I lived near the lakefront.  If you’ve ever been able to witness the moon slowly rise over Lake Michigan on a clear summer evening when the water is calm – I’m telling you right now, you can’t see that and think there is no God.  To take another example, the love we’ve experienced from our parents or children or spouse may cause us to contemplate how such a wonderful thing as love can come to be in such a world as ours.  

Into these notions and impressions of goodness steps Jesus.  The person of Jesus, the Word, clarifies and makes concrete these notions and ideas of goodness and love and beauty.  Jesus helps us to see and hear and understand God.  Jesus is what – is whom – God is communicating to us.  Jesus is the Word.

Let me just suggest that we’ve already touched upon some Good News here.  Our God is not a God who holds himself far above us because he thinks we’re unworthy of his notice.  No, our God is a God who reaches out to us and reveals himself to us, because he wants us to know him.   God has given us his Word so we can know him.  If we want to know about God, we should get to know this person Jesus.

God reveals himself to us, not only through Jesus’ words, but through the whole and entire person of Jesus: how Jesus came to be among us, what he said, what he did, the effect he had on others, who he is.  The person of Jesus is a revelation of God.  The Word reveals God.

Today, the clear, concrete thing God is revealing to us is that he has very Good News for the poor.  In the Bible, the term “poor” refers not only to those who have no money, but those who are outcasts or downtrodden or marginalized or forgotten.  If you’re fighting a painful or debilitating illness – God has Good News for you.  If you’re a person who gets bullied by others – God has Good News for you.  If you’re alone and have despaired of meeting someone who will love you and care for you – God has Good News for you.  God especially loves you, and is especially looking out for you.  That is what his son, Jesus, is communicating to us today. 

In response to this Good News, the thing to do is to get to know this person Jesus, because then we can get to know God.  We get to know Jesus the same way we get to know anyone else: through words.  We should share our words with Jesus – the words that tell him what is on our minds: our anxieties and fears, our hopes and our dreams.  Let us lay all of those at the altar, offering them to Jesus, that he may heal what is broken, and bless what is good in our lives.  This is prayer.  So is the other half the equation: listening to his words – listening to the Word.  Open your heart to listen to what Jesus is telling us today.  Open your heart to receive the Word.