Sunday January 26 2025

3rd Sunday During the Year – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Nehemiah 8, 2-4a.5-6.8-10

Psalm: 18 (19), 8, 9, 10, 15

2rd reading: 1 Corinthians 12, 12-30

Gospel: Luke 1, 1-4; 4, 14-21

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Some 2500 years ago, the people of Israel were gathered together as we heard in the first reading, to listen to the proclamation of the Word of God read in the Book of the Law. We are used to this, but let us take the time to measure how extraordinary it is to be able to hear God speak with our human ears through an understandable language, a memorable language, which can be written down and which can be retained by heart. And for centuries and centuries, the people of Israel, until today, then all the disciples of Jesus, son of Israel, for 2000 years, have listened to the proclamation of the Word of God as we are doing this morning.

Jesus, son of Israel, is accustomed, the Gospel tells us, to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath, to let himself be gathered with the other sons of Israel to listen to the Word of God, and to respond to God in prayer. Saint Luke relates this episode to us in the synagogue of Nazareth, where Jesus had been raised. But we have preceded this story, which is in chapter 4, with the first four verses of the Gospel to remind us what a Gospel is.

Luke says it very clearly: the one to whom he is writing, Theophilus, has already received the Revelation, he has already been catechized, he has already learned to know the Lord. And Luke composes a story… He composes, that is to say, he does the work of a writer by arranging things as it seems relevant to him, by going to inquire with eyewitnesses, people who have seen, no doubt he also has documents where words that the Lord may have said have been noted. And with all this, he composes a continuous exposition to reassure Theophilus in what he has heard. Finally, we can say that a Gospel is like an aide-mémoire so that what has been transmitted to us by oral tradition, by the testimony of those who live by Christ, we can return to it constantly with a support. In the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus stands up to proclaim the reading which that day is this passage from chapter 61 of Isaiah. In Jesus' time, as now, there was a liturgical calendar with a distribution of readings; and no doubt Jesus knows that on that Saturday, this passage is being read, and he wants to read it to him. Why? Precisely because of what he is going to do with it. This passage from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”, if we translate literally "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor". We usually translate the verb “to evangelize” as “to proclaim the good news”; here: “to bring the good news”.

By doing this, we induce the idea that it is a discourse. However, this Gospel tells us something else. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.”, that is to say: what does it mean to evangelize the poor? Well, that's it: “He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”. This evangelization of the poor is an act of salvation. It is not a speech: it is what the Lord does to heal and save his people.

But what is the comment he is making? Again, let us listen to a literal translation from the Greek: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears.” That is, today this Scripture has been proclaimed by the Only One who can say in all truth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” because he is precisely the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed of God, the one who has received the anointing, the one on whom the Spirit rests in fullness… This is what John the Baptist saw at baptism. Scripture, this Scripture, is fulfilled that day because it is pronounced by Christ. And since then, this is what is realized in the entire liturgy of the Church.

Thus, in its constitution on the liturgy, the Second Vatican Council tells us: "[Christ] is present there in his word, because it is he who speaks while the Holy Scriptures are read in the Church" (Sacrosanctum concilium No. 7). It is he who speaks! When the readers, just now, proclaimed the book of Nehemiah, the first Letter to the Corinthians, when the deacon proclaimed the Gospel, it is the Lord who spoke to us! And we are not dealing with texts, we are dealing with the Password of God. And we must truly have in our hearts, this faith, that when we open the Holy Scriptures - whether in liturgical proclamation, whether in a group of Christians who take the time to meditate on the Holy Scriptures, whether in the privacy of one's room when in prayer one opens one's Bible to read, to meditate - we must truly have a lively awareness that it is the Lord who speaks; and therefore always open ourselves to his presence and welcome this word as the Word of God. We can work on it to know it and understand it better, but it is with the aim that the Lord can, through Holy Scripture, make us hear his Word. And in a certain way, we can say that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to transform the dead letter of the Scriptures into living words of God. It is very interesting to look in the writings of Saint Therese, at the place that the Holy Scriptures occupy precisely. There are some 1800 quotes from the Holy Scriptures in all of Thérèse's writings, I have not made an exhaustive study, but for the moment, I do not remember having seen in Thérèse a reference to the Holy Scriptures which is a reference to a texts. These are references to biblical books, but very often, it is a reference to Jesus speaking, to the Holy Spirit speaking.

I will give you some examples. In a rather extraordinary letter, letter 165 to Céline, where Thérèse reads Scripture in a very surprising way, I read you this:

I don't know if you are still in the same frame of mind (Thérèse said to Céline) as the other day, but I will nevertheless tell you a passage from the Song of Songs which perfectly expresses what a soul plunged into dryness is like and which nothing can rejoice or console.

She quotes a passage from the Song of Songs, comments on it as something current and continues by saying:

Jesus […] sees our sadness and suddenly his sweet voice is heard, a voice sweeter than the breath of spring: “Come back, come back, my Shulamite, come back, come back so that we may consider you!…” (Cant. chap. VI, v.XII). What a call that of our Spouse!… (LT 165 to Céline – July 7, 1894)

Extraordinary! She is reading the Song of Songs, she sees that what is described speaks to her of what she is experiencing, and when then, in the Song, the husband speaks to the wife, she takes this as the words of Jesus himself: Jesus sees our sadness and he says to us: come back, come back.

She is not in front of a text: she is living her relationship with the Lord who speaks through the Scriptures.

In her retreat of September 1896, which would give birth to this fiery text that is manuscript B, she wrote in the introduction, letter 196 to her sister Marie du Sacré-Cœur:

I understand so well that only love can make us pleasing to the Good Lord that this love is the only good that I aspire to. Jesus is pleased to show me the only path that leads to this Divine furnace…

But how does Jesus show him? Through the Holy Scriptures: this path is the abandonment of the little child who falls asleep without fear in the arms of his Father... "If anyone is very little, let him come to me" said the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Solomon, and this same Spirit of Love also said that "Mercy is granted to the little ones". In his name the prophet Isaiah reveals to us that on the last day "the Lord will lead his flock to the pastures, he will gather the little lambs and press them to his bosom", and as if all these promises were not enough, the same prophet whose inspired gaze already plunged into the eternal depths cries out in the name of the Lord: "As a mother caresses her child, so I will comfort you, I will carry you in my bosom and caress you on my knees. » (LT 196 to Sr Marie of the Sacred Heart – September 13, 1896)

I will stop there. I could go on for a long time showing you how Thérèse listens to God who speaks, listens to Jesus who speaks, listens to the Holy Spirit who speaks through the Holy Scriptures. And her way of doing things is truly a model for us, a call to do as she does. But be careful! Thérèse is very careful — she does not read only that, and she has also read a lot and notably in the Imitation of Jesus Christ — to remain within the Catholic faith. We are not alone before the Holy Scriptures, we are in a tradition, that is to say an act of transmission. And that is why in Catholic Bibles, there are footnotes because we are not alone. We are within a people who profess a faith regulated by Dogma. We do not believe just anything, each having their own ideas about what to believe… no. We receive the Revelation guaranteed by the apostles. The bishops, successors of the apostles, are the guarantors of the orthodoxy of the faith. And it is within this coherence of faith that we read the Holy Scriptures and let the Lord teach us.

In Manuscript C, Thérèse will also say how she seeks her path.

In manuscript B, she explains how she found her calling.

In the second reading today we heard this diversity of vocations that make up the Church.

But it is always by listening to the Word of God, by seeking to understand what God reveals to us, that we will each be able, together, to find our rightful place in the body of the Church, to be able to bear the fruit that God expects of us.

Blessed be he!

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine