Sunday 22 January 2023 - Sunday of The Word of God

Isaiah 8:23-9:3/ Psalm 26(27)/ 1 Corinthians 1:10-13,17/ Matthew 4:12-23

Jesus had made his way to the beautiful lakeside fishing town of Capernaum. I have been privileged to visit there myself and out of all the places in the Holy Land that I went to I felt the closest to Jesus there. The lakeside and the pathways between the ruins of the ancient buildings are where Jesus walked. He taught in the temple there and he chose his first apostles from the hardworking fishing community plying their trade on the lake.

On the last two Sundays we have heard accounts of the Baptism of Jesus and how his three year mission to bring redemption to our fallen world was begun. This week Jesus puts his mission into action starting to gather around him a group of people to become his apostles. The title Apostle comes from the Greek meaning ‘one who is sent’. The apostles would eventually be the ones who were sent by Jesus to spread his word throughout the world.

In starting his mission in Capernaum Jesus fulfilled the prophecy we hear about in the first reading. Jesus was like a great light being switched on and his simple message of repentance and the closeness of the Kingdom of God seems to have had an enormous effect on people. Imagine us going about our daily work, the work we need to do to make a living, and some stranger comes along and calls us to follow him. What would be our reaction to this? For the fishermen brothers Simon and Andrew, and James and John, their reaction was instant. Leaving their nets and boats on the shore, James and John even leaving their father, they followed Jesus and so became the first of the apostles. These were simple uneducated men who only knew fishing as a trade, but something told them to make a complete break and follow this man Jesus.

If we consider who Jesus is we can begin to understand how his words can cause such a dramatic reaction. Although fully human Jesus was God, the Word made Flesh, his words are the words of God so cannot fail to contain all the power and majesty that encapsulates. If God speaks our souls cannot fail to listen because they are created to seek out their everlasting life with God. In the first passage of the Bible we read how God commanded things into being by his word, ‘let there be light, and there was light. (Genesis 1:3). It is the power of God’s word that we see at work through Jesus when he had such a dramatic effect on those who saw and heard him. He is the embodiment of the Word of God and we hear how people listened to him because he ‘taught them with authority’ (Matthew 7:29).

What the fishermen at Capernaum experienced was the call of conversion from the Word of God. A call to ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ It is likely that these simple fishermen, like us, had little idea of why they had to repent. In his call Jesus appears to presuppose that we should feel a sincere regret for some wrongdoing, sin, that we should offer remorse for. We are not encouraged by the world to consider that we are personally wrong or sinful. At the same time we see everywhere people being criticised and judged for what they do or say. If we look closely at ourselves, we might see that we are only too quick to join in with the crowd. To follow the ways of the world, to pick on and judge others to compromise our faith for the sake of accepting what society is demanding.

Our conversion might not be as dramatic as it was for Peter and his colleagues. For most of us conversion is a lifelong mission to follow Jesus as we struggle to separate ourselves from the temptations offered by the world. The second reading today is timely, and it can give us reassurance in a way. Paul was writing to the church in Corinth. This was a bustling trading city with many different layers of society in many ways like the western world we live in. Seemingly things were not so different then as they are today. Factions had opened up within the new Christian community which Paul was trying to address. The focus should always be on the Word of God spoken by Jesus and not the individuals who promote it. It is a great scandal that the Christian family is so divided around many different factions and we pray continually for Christian unity. We need to respond directly to the call of Jesus to repent. We need to seek to be united in belief and practice rather than distracted by position taking, following individual personalities or populist worldly celebrities.

In 2019 Pope Francis established the Third Sunday of the Year to be a day to celebrate The Word of God. In so doing he said, “Devoting a specific Sunday of the liturgical year to the word of God can enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world”. Through our baptism we are, like the first Apostles, called to spread God’s word to our world also becoming people who are sent, apostles of the Lord.

God Bless, Brendan.