Scriptures Point the Way to Reconciliation

Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

The various media that inform and entertain us is filled with commentaries that tell us that we are living at a time of great division in our country. The recent elections have provided us with the stark reality that we are divided on cultural, political, and social levels. Issues such as gun violence, voting rights, abortion on demand, crime, and inflation are all topics which seem to divide our country. Despite our divisions, we all remember that when various disasters have befallen us, we have been able to come together and help one another. This was in evidence once again when tornadoes swept through the southern part of our country and flattened several communities in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Georgia. So, though we are a people who disagree on various issues, we also seen to have been able to come together and work to restore the homes of people who have suffered these calamities.

Division is nothing new. Today’s reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians is a good example. The very reason that St. Paul wrote this letter is the fact that this community had found itself divided on a number of different levels. There were petty jealousies at work. The community had become divided by economic differences so much so that affluent people avoided having to worship with poor people. Egregious moral decay and deviant sexual practices had deeply divided the community of Corinth. The divisions were so pronounced that St. Paul addressed them in the opening chapter of this letter: “I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” We will continue to read from this letter on each of the Sundays before the Season of Lent, which this year begins on February 22. Over the next few Sundays, St. Paul will remind us that we are, as a community, the Body of Christ, a community that has been born through the suffering and death of Jesus on a cross. Divisions in a Christian community should be considered a cause for scandal. However, we have so hardened our hearts that it is almost impossible to enter into any sort of dialogue with people of a different viewpoint.

In instituting the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time as the Sunday of the word of God, Pope Francis has asked us to return to the Scriptures as a means of seeking reconciliation within our communities. The message of the Gospel must become our common language. It is only through consideration of the Scriptures that we will reach the point which Isaiah describes in today’s first reading. Isaiah promises two things, the two things everyone both needs and wants the most, the two things that satisfy the essential desires of the two powers that distinguish us from other animals – the head and the heart, the mind and the will – the two things everyone wants for their own sake, as ends, not merely as means to some other end. Those two things are light and joy: the light of truth for the mind to know and the joy of true goodness and happiness for the will to enjoy.

All God’s promises, not just some of them, come true in Christ. The prophets promised a new covenant with God, a marriage, if you will, between the human and the divine. Jesus, both human and divine, exemplifies and inaugurates that covenant. As the Body of Christ, we are meant to exemplify that covenant by the way we live our lives. Just as Jesus cannot be separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit, we should not be separated from them. Only if we know and study and pray with the Scriptures, both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, both the Old and the New Testament, can we come to know God’s will for us.

So it is that the Holy Father, Pope Francis, asks us to set aside this particular Sunday to remind us of the essential place that the Scriptures must hold in our lives. We cannot afford to let our Bibles gather dust on the shelf. Even if it is only one verse each day, even if we only spend a few minutes contemplating their meaning, we must find a place in our daily lives for God’s Holy Word.