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Please call the rectory if you can help.


3RD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C)

  1. Isaiah the prophet, Paul the Apostles and Luke the Evangelist speak to us today in the Holy Spirit. Paul reminds us that you and I and all who believe, with Christ as our head, form the body of Christ and make it present in the world of this time. “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ.” The unity of disciples is essential for the work of evangelization. In his final evening with his disciples, the Lord Jesus prayed for the unity of all who follow him in the mystery of the Church – “That all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that the world may believe that you sent me.”

  2. In our Gospel reading, the evangelist Luke describes the first teaching Jesus gave at the start of his public ministry. By quoting from the prophet Isaiah; the Lord made public his claim to the office of the Messiah, the Promised One, the One who was to come into the world to set things right, right between God and ourselves, right between ourselves and our neighbors in human communities..

  3. I would like to concentrate on the first reading and begin with a question: Have you ever heard of the Babylonian captivity? Centuries before Christ, in spite of warnings from the great prophets like Isaiah, ancient Israel was overcome by the world-dominating Babylonians. Jerusalem was destroyed and its citizens were carried off into exile. Babylon, some one hundred miles north of present-day Baghdad, became their place of exile. Ancient Israel, as far as Isaiah’s thinking is concerned, had collapsed mainly from within because Israel had wandered far from the Law of the Lord. Along came Cyrus the Great, leader of the Persians, who overthrew the Babylonians and allowed the Israelites to return to their devastated homeland. We can hardly imagine the dismay of God’s Old Testament people returning to their homeland in ruins, but we must imagine as well their joy because they had come home.

  4. In our first reading, we meet Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah the governor, whom God raised up at this time for the restoration and reorganization of Jewish life, following the tragic events of the Babylonian exile. Nehemiah was a man of action who supervised the rebuilding of Jerusalem and introduced greatly needed administrative reforms. Ezra was the religious figure who succeeded in establishing once again the Torah, that is, God’s law first given to Moses and now constitutive of the renewed Jewish community back from exile. Together these leaders made it possible for Judaism, now called by historians “Second Temple Judaism”, to regain its identity as God’s people. Our reading today pictures the residents of Jerusalem gathered before the Water Gate. Ezra was called to bring forth the Book of the Law which God had prescribed through Moses centuries before. “The Law is the key to renewal” – says Ezra as though reciting the responsorial psalm in our liturgy today – “The Law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul; the decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commands of the Lord are clear, enlightening the eye.” The people were weeping as they listened to Ezra. But Nehemiah said to them – “Today is holy to the Lord, your God. Do not be sad and do not weep, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.”

  5. Is all this business about Ezra and Nehemiah just ancient history or does it speak to us who live in the midst of massive unbelief that is taking on new form in our day? Formerly, unbelief was tolerant of other people’s religious belief. Now a new form is emerging which is intolerant, especially of Christian belief. Surely our problems in the Church and in society cannot compare with the tragedy of the Babylonian Captivity. However, we must acknowledge that we live in a time when God is banished from the public square and has no role in the big decisions of politics and economics. It is vitally important that we listen carefully to God’s word which we must seek to understand and to treasure and to put into practice.

  6. Our liturgies here at Sacred Heart Parish give great prominence to the Book of the Gospels which we can also call the Book of the Law of Christ or the Book of the Law of God for us who follow Christ. At the beginning of Mass, the Book of the Gospels is carried in solemn procession to the altar and placed on the altar until the celebrant takes the Book of the Gospels, this time in procession with the acolytes, and carries it to the podium. What can we learn from the honor we display to the Book of the Gospels? I would like to read to you the Gospel we had yesterday morning, a two-sentence excerpt from the Gospel according to Mark. It goes as follows: “Jesus returned from Jerusalem to his home in Nazareth. Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this, they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’.” I wonder what people in Newton say of us who profess our Catholic faith? At Christmastime, we professed our faith in Jesus as true God and true Man. At Easter time, we will profess the mystery of his resurrection as the pledge of our own resurrection at the end-time. Then there are the moral and social teachings of the Church. We are to live the Beatitudes as normative for our discipleship; we are to practice the spiritual and corporal works of mercy; we are to be experts in obedience to Christ’s law of forgiveness; we are to be expert practitioners of his law of love, even of enemies. What do our neighbors think of us? Do they say – “These Catholic Christians are out of their mind?” If they do not say that, does that mean we do not exhibit much obedience to the Gospel? If they do say this about us, then we ought not to be worrisome about the matter. We are in very good company. Jesus’ relatives and friends also said of him – “He is out of his mind”.