Believing the Word

There are certain priests in our diocese who are known as great preachers. Maybe one of the greatest was the late Msgr. John O’Donnell. After my ordination, I was sent to work at Immaculate Conception parish in Fort Smith, where Msgr. O’Donnell had been the pastor only a few years before. I remember that many people told me about how great a preacher he was, and a few of them told me about one particular sermon they remembered very well. It was short, just one sentence, and they even remembered the exact words: “God loves you, and he wants you to believe it.”

Even though I didn’t hear it myself, that short sermon has stayed with me because, in a sense, it says what every homily should say. At the heart of our faith is the love of God – his love for us, and our love for him in return. Every homily, indeed, every word we speak about our faith should in some way be rooted in that belief: that God loves us and he wants us to know it. It’s only when we truly take that message to heart – believing it, allowing it to sink in – that we then are ready to learn to love him in return.

In today’s Gospel, we hear the exact words of Jesus’s first sermon, which was even shorter than Msgr. O’Donnell’s: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The Gospel tells us about the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry, a ministry that in word and action was all about revealing exactly what Msgr. O’Donnell’s homily said: God loves us, and he wants us to know it. In Jesus’s teaching and preaching and healing, God’s love became real for people in a completely new way. St. Matthew describes it like light shining on those in darkness – in Christ, the joy and newness of God illuminated all the old and tired ways of humanity. They were able to see the love of God made visible in the very person of Jesus.

It must have been a special thing to be present in Galilee at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry: to hear him preach and to see him heal the sick. But just because you and I live in a different time and place doesn’t mean that we can’t experience the same kind of newness and joy that the people of his day experienced. Jesus wants to bring light to our darkness – he wants to illuminate and renew all of the things about our lives that are old and tired out. For that to happen, though, we need to hear him – we must be able to continually hear his Word speaking to us. 

Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures (c. 1909) by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Today our Church celebrates the first annual Sunday of the Word of God. This is a new feast that Pope Francis has instituted to encourage the whole Church to appreciate in a new way the importance of Scripture. It’s often said that Catholics don’t know their Bibles very well, at least as compared to Protestants. That may be partially true; we don’t always emphasize the personal practice reading of Scripture in the way that they do and in the way that we should. But we do hear quite a bit of the Word of God proclaimed every week at Mass, often more than is read or heard in other Christian services. In that way, we Catholics may know more Scripture than we are given credit for. We may not be able to cite chapter and verse, but if we listen attentively each week, we can become familiar with the broad themes and insights that Scripture provides us.

What we need to perhaps grow in is the conscious, intentional appreciation for Scripture as the living Word of God speaking to us today. The people of Galilee heard Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, as he proclaimed the Good News of God’s love – they hung on his every word as he taught in their streets and preached in their synagogues. When we read Scripture, or hear it read in the liturgy, we are encountering the Good News in just as new and fresh and powerful a way as it would be if Jesus himself were to show up in the streets of Stuttgart. As God's Word, Scripture transcends the historical context in which it is written; as the Letter to the Hebrews says (Heb 4:12), it is living and effective – it has something critically important to say to us, right here and now.

There are lots of great ways to deepen our knowledge and love of Scripture. There are great Bible studies out there, both individual and group studies, that teach from a Catholic perspective. There are reflections for the readings for Mass each day that you can read online or have sent to your email. There are apps and booklets that help you incorporate Scripture into your daily prayer, whether through praying the psalms, or through the practice of meditation called lectio divina.

Here’s one really easy recommendation for how to grow in your encounter with the Word of God: read the Sunday readings two times during the week before Mass begins. The Mass readings for each Sunday are readily available in a number of places, in books and especially online. Read them the first time a few days before Mass, just to begin to acclimate your ears to what is being said. Read them the second time Saturday afternoon, or Sunday morning, with a short prayer to ask God to help you to hear what he is trying to say. If nothing else, you always have the chance to arrive to Mass a few minutes early – even just five minutes – and read them from the missalette. If you do this, then when you finally hear them the pulpit, it will be the third time that you have heard the Word of God proclaimed, and I guarantee you will understand the Scripture in a deeper way than you would have otherwise, and perhaps the homily will speak to you a bit more as well.

Friends, the best preachers are those who speak not their own message but the Word of God. That’s why those people at Immaculate Conception loved Msgr. O’Donnell’s sermon – because when he said, “God loves you, and he wants you to believe it,” they heard not his voice, but the voice of Jesus. When we deepen our knowledge and love of Scripture, we too hear God’s Word speaking in love to us, saying something new and fresh and powerful for our lives right now. Let’s renew our efforts to make the reading of Sacred Scripture part of our daily encounter with the Lord, so that we can hear his Word and follow him more faithfully.