Fr. John O’Callaghan.Today’s Mass started with a procession – and pride of place was given to the Gospel book. Encased in silver, it was reverently carried high up and placed on the altar and, later, it was brought to this ambo, honoured with candles and incense. We stood for it and the choir sang alleluia. After its proclamation we acknowledged it as Gospel, the Good News of the Lord, saying “Thanks be to God!”. This speaks volumns! We recognise Jesus’s word being communicated to us; and as Jesus came from God we understand God has communicated with us. And similarly, after each of the preceding two readings, the reader announced it as “The Word of the Lord” and we acknowledged this with “Thanks be to God!”. We acknowledge that God reveals himself through through human speech. God breaks the silence and reveals himself in many ways, through the marvels of nature, through marvellous people, but he also reveals Himself through the medium of words. This is the theme of today’s readings.
In the first one we heard the priest Ezra reading the Law of Moses to people assembled in Jerusalem. He was reading the Ten Commandments given on Mount Sinai. That was an exceptional and foundational moment of communication between God and the human race. It is said that God even wrote out the Commandments. It could not have been expressed in a clearer and more profound way that God really did enter into communication with us and taught us how to live. We don’t have to believe that the words were actually chisseled out on stone tablets by God; that was a manner of speaking; it is most likely a simple metaphor but we do believe God to be their ultimate source and that he revealed his teaching through Moses.
This is actually a very important point about biblical literature and it distinguishes Catholics from, for example, fundamentalists: what we read in the Bible must be interpreted in the same spirit in which it was written. The account of creation, for instance, as happening over six days does not mean that the universe just popped up, after six times twenty-four hours! The serpent in the Garden of Eden did not actually speak to Eve in Hebrew, and nor are we being asked to believe that God got hold of a hammer and chisel. We recognise poetic language can communicate deeper truths than words taken literally. The word of God uses many literary genres, and it doesn’t come flowing unalloyed, like water through a pipe, from the mouth of God, as some people say; no, it comes mediated by human beings! That is what makes interpreting scripture hard: the truth in it is not always easily recognizable.
Today’s gospel is also an instance of God communicating with us and we heard a very telling example. Jesus is in the synagogue; he unrolls the scroll of Isaiah and finds the passage which is widely recognised as the summit and quintessence of the prophetic tradition and he applies it to himself, saying: “This text is being fulfilled today, even as you listen”. Jesus is saying that he himself is the one to ‘give freedom to captives and make the blind see’. He did that, in a literal sense to many people, sick in mind or body, but he also did it on a far deeper level for us all. He destroyed the finality of death and opened the way to eternal life, when he rose from the dead. It is in this way that Jesus fulfilled the scriptures, on a deeper level. The whole Bible can be read and interpreted from this perspective and thereby gives convincing testimony to Christ as fulfilment of the scriptures and traditions of Israel, so that we may believe intelligently.
The word of God is not just understood, as the Jewish scribes saw it, as a guide for living but as a truth test, an authenticity test for Jesus as Messiah and coming from God. God revealed Himself progressively through his words, spoken by Moses and the prophets. These words culminated in the incarnation, the coming into the world, of God’s own self, most appropriatly known as ‘the Word of God’. “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.” Jesus Christ the man is God’s greatest self-expression. It is through him that we can get to know better than ever the truth about God.
When dealing with such heady matters it is reassuring to know that our own interpretations of the word of God are subject to correction. We are part of a church community where, as the Second Letter of Peter says: “the interpretation of scriptural prophecy is never a matter for the individual. For no prophecy ever came from human initiative. When people spoke for God it was the Holy Spirit that moved them.” May our listening to the word of the Lord brings us, slowly but surely, to a greater knowledge and love of God!