3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. (Isaiah 9:1)

On September 30 of last year, Pope Francis issued a letter declaring that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time was to be set aside every year as the “Sunday of the Word of God.” The Holy Father urged pastors to celebrate this day with special homilies, added reverence to the Scriptures in Mass, and by encouraging us to take up the Scriptures anew and find in them the treasures of God’s word for our lives.

In his letter, Pope Francis spoke about how we cannot read the Bible in the same way we read any other book. “Since faith comes from hearing,” he wrote, “and what is heard is based on the word of Christ, believers are bound to listen attentively to the word of the Lord, both in the celebration of the liturgy and in their personal prayer and reflection” (Aperuit Illis, 7).

This “attentive listening” means asking the Holy Spirit, who has inspired the Scriptures, to breathe life into the words we read. It means trying to silence the other voices in our minds and quiet our anxious hearts so that we can hear God’s voice speaking to us. As Pope Francis wrote, “Without the work of the Spirit, there would always be a risk of remaining limited to the written text alone.” But as we take in God’s word prayerfully, it becomes for us “the living word of God, experienced and handed down in the faith of his holy people” (9).

God has a message just for you today, and that message may well be embedded in the readings you will hear at Mass. It will be something personal and inspiring. No one else will hear these readings in exactly the same way that you will. No one else will receive exactly the same message that you will. So practice the attentive listening that Pope Francis described. What is he saying to you? How will the “great light” of God’s word shine in your heart today (Isaiah 9:1)?

Come, Holy Spirit! Open my ears and my heart to your word today.

Meditations 26 January 2020 ~ The Word Among Us