189. Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Meditations no. 564 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

In Sacred Scripture, God lovingly goes out to meet his children to converse with them.

THE FIRST reading of today’s Mass, taken from the Book of Nehemiah, brings us to an episode of particular importance in the history of Israel. During the years of exile in Babylon, the Jewish people had been uprooted, deprived of their land and their traditions. At the end of this period of dispersion, the small Jewish community was re-established in Jerusalem and the Law of God, the foundation of religious and social life, was once again publicly and solemnly proclaimed. Ezra the scribe, we read, opened the book in the sight of all the people, for it towered above all, and when he opened it, all the people rose to their feet. Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, amen!” and raised their hands. Then they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the Lord with their faces to the ground.

Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest, who was reading, and the Levites, who were instructing the people, said to them all, “Today is a holy day for the Lord your God! Do not mourn or weep. … Do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

It is a moment of great spiritual intensity. One can understand the deep emotion of those who listened again and freely to the word of God, after the tragedy of deportation. Precisely for this reason, Nehemiah exhorts them to be happy, because the word of the Lord is strength and joy for hearts.

On this day, the liturgy warns us that the Lord also speaks to us through Sacred Scripture, it impels us to make these sentiments of joy and gratitude our own, making use of the words of the Responsorial Psalm: Verba tua, Domine, spiritus et vita sunt; your words, Lord, are spirit and life. Through the liturgy, God makes known to us his way of acting “in the history of salvation and in the personal life” of each of the faithful: God does what he says, without separation. As Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes, “in liturgical action we are before his Word that does what he says”.

The Lord, in his admirable condescension, continues to use human words to communicate with us. “In the sacred books,” says a document of the Second Vatican Council, “the Father, who is in heaven, lovingly goes out to meet his children to converse with them. And so great is the power and strength of the Word of God that it constitutes the sustenance and vigour of the Church, firmness of faith for her children, nourishment of the soul, a limpid and perennial source of spiritual life.”

The reading of the Word of God enlightens the thought, awakens the imagination, enkindles the affections, orients and guides the will. In this way, as a response to the divine initiative and under the action of the Holy Spirit, a true dialogue arises between man and God, in which all our faculties and powers are involved: may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart in your presence be pleasing to you. Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer!

Although God certainly seeks every human being through channels and paths that only He knows, attentive meditation on the inspired texts is always an inexhaustible source for nourishing the interior life and a sure way to listen to God and respond to what He asks of us. This is what our Father urged us to do, for moments of meditation. My son, continue with your most personal prayer, which does not need the sound of words. And speak to the Lord like this, face to face, you and He alone (…). Be bold, be courageous, be daring! Continue with your personal prayer and commit yourself: Lord, no more! No more delays, no more putting up difficulties, no more resistance to your grace; I want to be that good leaven that makes the whole dough leaven.

Listening to God’s Word requires an inner attitude of attention and openness.

AT VARIOUS times and in many ways God spoke in the past to our fathers through the prophets, we read in the letter to the Hebrews. In these last days he has spoken to us through his Son.

Christ is the fullness of Revelation. With his whole life he makes known to us what God is like. Jesus’ gestures and manner of speaking, his words and silences, his works and feelings, introduce us to a particularly profound knowledge of divine intimacy. Jesus can say: whoever sees me, sees the Father; and God the Father says: This is my beloved Son; listen to him.

Seeing and listening to Christ requires us to look at his earthly life, with commitment and interest. For this reason, in the Work we have learned to read and meditate on the New Testament every day, with the intention of introducing ourselves into the different scenes as one more character in order to encounter Jesus of Nazareth who, as our Father reminds us, is alive: he is not a figure who passed away, who existed at one time and who left, leaving us a wonderful memory and example.

No: Christ lives. Jesus is Emmanuel: God with us.

And we are also taught to read the Bible in its inseparable unity: “All divine Scripture is one book, and this book is Christ, because all Scripture speaks of Christ and is fulfilled in Christ.” St. Augustine says, “The New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old is manifest in the New.”

Today the Gospel of the Mass presents the Lord to us in Nazareth, the city where he had grown up, and, according to his custom, he entered the synagogue on Saturday and rose to read. When the reading was finished, he rolled up the book again, handed it back to the minister and sat down. With all these details, Saint Luke describes the atmosphere of expectation that had been created around the Master and his teachings. Everyone in the synagogue, he tells us, had their eyes fixed on him.

Christ our Lord also now sees us, hears us, and - in a similar way as he did with those who were protagonists of the events we are witnessing - he desires to converse with men. His words cross the centuries and reach us with the same freshness and with the same vigor with which they were spoken.

On our part, we need the disposition proper to the listener: in addition to listening, it implies a certain concentration on the speaker, in order to grasp his message in its entirety and to appropriate its content. This is the attitude that is reflected in the inhabitants of Nazareth when they observe Christ in the synagogue: they are attentive to his gestures, to his words, to his explanations.

Such an attitude requires, in short, to keep alive the capacity for surprise in the face of scenes and words that, although they may be familiar, must always be meditated upon as if they were read or heard for the first time. Only those who are once again amazed at the eternal newness of Christ, and open their hearts wide to Him, will be able to hear his voice in the intimacy of their own conscience and to obtain the fruit of this divine action.

Our Father, in one of his homilies, facilitates this task of interior renewal. The Word of God has fallen into our souls. What kind of land have we prepared for it? Are stones abounding? Is it full of thorns? Is it perhaps a place too trodden by merely human, small, invigorous walks? Lord, may my plot be good, fertile land, generously exposed to rain and sun; may your sowing take root; may it produce ears of corn, pomegranates, good wheat.

In docility to the Word of God is found the essence of holiness.

To deepen the content of Sacred Scripture is a gift of grace, but it also requires a determined personal commitment. Saint Augustine affirms that “divine Scripture is like a field in which a building is to be erected. Let us not be lazy, nor be content to build on the surface; we must dig deeper, until we reach the living rock: the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4)”.

It is not a question of techniques or methods that must be applied systematically, nor of elaborating more or less erudite reflections. It is simply a matter of appropriating what we read in order to compare it with our own lives and, moved by the Holy Spirit who guides our prayer, passing from thought to reality.

To achieve this, St. Josemaría offers some guidelines that can serve as a guide: First you imagine the scene or the mystery, which will serve to recollect yourself and meditate. Then you apply your understanding to consider that trait of the Master’s vice: his tender heart, his humility, his purity, his fulfillment of the Father’s Will. Then tell him what usually happens to you in these things, what happens to you, what is happening to you. Be attentive, because perhaps he will want to tell you something: and those interior movements will arise, that realization of the sense, those remonstrances.

It is natural that, as a consequence of these divine lights and motions, some practical and concrete purposes often arise, which guide our apostolic zeal or the struggle to improve in a certain virtue. They will then not be a mere product of our own decision, but the fruit of the action of grace, the result of having listened to the word of God with the desire to put it into practice, because it is always alive and effective, and sharper than a double-edged sword: it enters into the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discovers the feelings and thoughts of the heart. Thus, with this interior docility, prayer has an impact on piety, on work, on relationships with others, on the way we react to difficulties and on the joy that distinguishes us: we become more and more conformed to Christ.

At the same time, this meditation introduces us to a more direct and personal knowledge and contact with the Most Holy Humanity of Jesus, to the point of falling in love with Him. Look, my son; since you have to be amazed by some being who attracts you by his greatness, by his understanding, by his rectitude, by his goodness, by his beauty, go before Jesus Christ, who is your King and your God and your Love! Treat him! Talk to him! Listen to him! Tell him that you want to imitate his life. And for that, take the Gospel every day, as foreseen in your life plan, with the desire to know him better. Be a character in that divine plot, and react. Contemplate the miracles of Christ, hear the ebb and flow of the crowd around him, exchange words of friendship with the first Twelve. Look the Lord in the eye and fall in love with Him, so that you may be another Christ.

In Saint Mary we find the perfect model of those who keep God’s words and deeds in their hearts, meditating on them always. For this reason, when he hears his Mother praised, Jesus teaches where the essence of holiness lies, which we too must seek: blessed are those who listen to the word of God and keep it.