Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10, 1 Corinthians 12:12-30, Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
You have heard frequently of the Babylonian exile and how the Persians conquered the Babylonians fifty years later and allowed the Jews to return home. Many of the Jews in Babylon had become rather comfortable there and they did not return to Israel all at once. Little by little they came. Even a hundred years after they began to return, they were still struggling to rebuild their cities and their civilization. The Persians were still in control of the entire Middle East which included Israel. Nehemiah, a Jew, had been a high-level servant to the king of Persia and he asked his king to allow him to return to Israel to help his people rebuild. So, the king of Persia appointed him to be governor of Israel. In Nehemiah’s efforts to rebuild the nation, he had to start with what was most important and that was to remind the people that God had to take the first place in their lives. He realized much of the trauma his people had gone through at the time of their exile was because they had forgotten their God. In today’s first reading Nehemiah called for a general assembly of the people and the priest Ezra read God’s word to them. Remember, ordinary people did not have books in those days. Books were very expensive, since each one had to be individually written word by word. So, if the ordinary person were ever to know God’s word, someone had to read it or preach it to them. Ezra, thus, read God’s word to the people and interpreted it for them. The reading was most probably from the first five books of the bible. Notice that there was active participation on the part of God’s people as they heard the word. Possibly for the first time; raising their hands, answering “amen” bowing to the ground, listening attentively, weeping and rejoicing.
But while we must be grateful to St. Luke, we owe a bigger debt of gratitude still to the all-good, all-wise God who moved Luke and the other Evangelists to preserve for us in writing the essential truths of the Christian faith that has been handed down to us. The Apostles were companions of Christ. They witnessed his works and his words; they remembered most of his doings and his sayings, and what they might have forgotten the Holy Spirit recalled to their memory on that first Pentecost day in Jerusalem.
God in his wisdom established a teaching body in his Church which would safeguard the purity of the Christian truths, for “he himself would be with it all days,” and he gave us a written record of the facts of the faith in the Gospels and the ether writings of the New Testament.
How can we ever thank God sufficiently for his thoughtfulness in our regard? We Christians of today can be as certain, as assured, of the truth of the faith that we are trying to practice as was St. Luke who was converted by St. Paul. We have a living, teaching Magisterium in the Church, which authentically preserves and interprets for us the true facts of Christ’s teaching and works as written down for us by a first-generation Christian under the impulse and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.
We have a priceless gift of God in the inspired Books of the Bible. Let us show true appreciation for that gift by using it to build up a better knowledge of the Christian faith which it teaches us. There should be a Bible, or at least the New Testament, in every Christian home. It should not be an ornament on a shelf, but a fountain and source from which we can draw strength and refreshment in the daily practice of our Christian faith. Almost two thousand years ago, God’s infinite goodness provided this source of strength, the “fountain of living water,” for us Christians of this century. Are we grateful for his thoughtfulness? Are we nourishing our faith at this blessed fountain of his infinite wisdom and love?
Peace and all good!
Fr. Valery Burusu
Parochial Administrator