23 January 2022. Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
23 January 2022. Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year C).
Sunday of the Word of God (see below)
Neh 8:2-6, 8-10. Ezra the Scribe set out to re-establish the Jewish Laws, to bring his people back to the religion of Moses.
1 Cor 12:12-30. As the body is one though made of many parts so the Church forms many individuals into a living unity in Christ.
Lk 1:1-4, 4:14-21. In the Nazareth synagogue Jesus cites Isaiah: He will bring freedom to the poor and the oppressed.
Theme: We celebrate as Christ’s Body in which we all, laity and clergy, belong. We use our God-given talents for the sake of his church.
First Reading: Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10
The priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand; and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-30
(or, shorter version: 12:12-14. 27)
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to he hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honourable we invest with the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.
Gospel: Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Does Religious Law Matter?
In the First Reading and the Gospel today we have the seeds of an argument from the early days of the Church which raised tempers between conservative and progressive Christians, and was the main reason why St Paul’s journeying was everywhere dogged with controversy and hostility. On the one hand we have the famous priest and scribe, Ezra, leading a contingent of Jews back from exile about the year 400 B.C. and setting out to revive the integral Mosaic Law, translating and explaining it to the people, who welcomed this Law with veneration. On the other hand we have Jesus Christ saying that his mission is to bring the good news to the poor and proclaim freedom to captives.
St Paul’s goal was to help people understand the novelty of Christ’s grace and so attain this liberty, which he saw as freedom from enslavement to the Old Law. “Now we are rid of the Law,” he wrote to the Romans (7:6), “freed by his death (meaning the death of Christ) from our imprisonment, free to serve in the new spiritual way and not the old way of a written law.” No wonder the Jews took offence, for they imagined that the Law by itself conferred life, that one’s religion consisted in knowing perfectly the Mosaic code of written laws, as well as the thousands upon thousands of oral laws and regulations added on by the rabbis to explain the code. And yet the Law seems to have failed the Jews: in spite of it they, like everyone else, were sinners. The Law gave information; without it, Paul says, he should not have known what sin is. But the Law did not give spiritual strength, Paul contended. Even though it proposed the loftiest ideals, it could never transform a being of flesh into a spiritual being, capable of living the life of God. It is not the Law, but Grace, which sets a person free from sin.
Religion in the Messianic Age, Paul would say, is no longer mainly about the observance of Law, but is a question of knowing a person – Christ himself – and of loving and following him. For if sin has lost its control over a person’s life, it is due to something radically different from the Old Law, what we might refer to as the law of the Spirit, a law which is no longer part of a written code, but rather a new spiritual force acting from within. “And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). For Paul the behaviour that counts can be summed up in one phrase: “You must love your neighbour as yourself” (Gal 5:14). In Romans he lists some key points in the Decalogue which he says are summed up in this single phrase, “You must love your neighbour as yourself “(Rom 13:8-10)
The spiritual person will instinctively avoid offending God or others. But whoever avoids evil simply because it is against a legal prescription has not yet attained the freedom Paul spoke about. The truly free person avoids sin simply because sin is wrong in itself. In the course of time, Christianity did formulate commandments, moral precepts, the teachings of faith. But these are intended purely to set standards and avoid moral collapse. In the first centuries after Christ, as long as Christians frequently received Holy Communion, the Church never obliged them to receive once a year. It was only when the initial fervour decreased that the Church laid down the law of Easter duty. This law was not aimed at the fervent, who were guided by the prompting of the Holy Spirit within them and did not need such a law. But commandments, such as we find in the Catechism, are required from time to time, for we all carry the treasure of God’s grace in frail vessels.
Our consciences can be led astray, and the interior call of the Spirit may be drowned out by the urgings of sinful nature. When in doubt we could do no better than follow the advice given to his followers by Fr Charles de Foucauld, the French army officer who, after conversion, became a hermit in the Sahara desert: “Ask yourself in all instances: “What would our Lord have done?”, and then imitate him. This is your only rule, but it is your absolute rule.”
The Same But Different
A long time ago, a young teacher rented a house in my home town and started a secondary school for boys. There had long been one for girls run by the nuns in the local convent. The bulk of the population in this area were small farmers, who migrated seasonally to England to boost their meagre incomes to raise and educate their children. The only secondary school then available for boys was the diocesan college which was situated in another town. Only shopkeepers, teachers and other professionals could afford boarding-school fees. So there was great joy and support for this enterprising young teacher. It was short-lived. The Sunday after the “Academy” as it was grandly called, opened, the parish priest handed down an interdict from the pulpit, threatening to excommunicate all those who sent their children to this school. The reasons given were that it was a threat to the diocesan college and that it usurped the church’s prerogative in the field of education. There was consternation. A protest was started, spearheaded mostly by women. It didn’t help that the most vociferous of these were, like my mother, themselves the wives of teachers whose school manager was the same parish priest. Deputations were sent to the bishop. The upshot of the affair was that the bishop instructed the local curate to start another school under the aegis of the church, which, in fact, opened just in time for me to begin my secondary education. As for the enterprising lay teacher, he found a post in a neighbouring diocesan college, where he spent the rest of his life until retirement. If he was embittered by his earlier treatment, he has left no record of it.
As we read of teachers’ congresses and parents’ associations, and the green papers and white papers issuing from the department of education, it is a far cry from those heady days when the church was the sole arbiter in educational matters. What is sad to observe is that here and elsewhere, every concession, from communion in the hand to girl altar-servers, had to be wrenched from a reluctant church. Now in full retreat, she continues to fight a rear-guard action, to preserve zones of interest she has neither the mandate nor the manpower to maintain. If the present crisis of vocations continues, she may not even be able to assure her sacramental mission in the future. And all this with a vast reserve of talent and goodwill in her pews only waiting to be tapped. One might be forgiven the un-theological thought that there must be one frustrated Holy Spirit somewhere out there.
I have often wondered why St Paul’s vision of the church as the body of Christ, with its different parts, each exercising different functions, never really caught on. Was it because its more egalitarian overtones clashed with the more enduring vertical vision of a hierarchical church? “In the one Spirit we were all baptised,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink. Nor is the body to be identified with any one of its many parts. Now you together are Christ’s body; but each of you is a different part of it.” It doesn’t sit well with the more familiar chain-of-command version we are accustomed to.
Just over fifty years ago, Pope John XXIII spoke of a “new Pentecost.” The Council Fathers at Vatican II spoke enthusiastically of collegiality and the active participation of the laity. It seemed the dawn of a new age. The church as the Body of Christ was about to become a reality. Since then the old regime seems to have reasserted itself in many ways. The Body of Christ continues to bleed. If we do not share its responsibilities, we share its ills. The disclosures of clerical scandals have brought home to us St Paul’s observation: “If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it.” Perhaps, it is the Holy Spirit’s way of teaching us that, like it or not, we clergy and laity alike are all part of the church, the Body of Christ. That school I mentioned at the beginning has long since passed away. There may be a moral there somewhere.
The Synagogue Sermon
The mission of Jesus is expressed with great force in today’s Gospel. The Spirit that had come upon him in the Jordan River was leading him to proclaim a message and a way of life to teach. He had moved away from home, and had made such an impression that word about him had got back to his home place of Nazareth. We are told that he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, as he usually did… and announced the start of a new age!
His sermon would be understood by anyone who was familiar with the words of the prophets. Isaiah had stated clearly what would happen when the Messiah came. Jesus read that wonderful passage to them, then rolled up the scroll and announced “Today these words are coming true even as I speak.” When he announced that he had come to replace the old Jewish love of law with a new law of love, it caused quite a commotion. At first we are told that everyone was pleased with his basic message; but in next Sunday’s gospel, we hear how this encounter ended up. Not too well, actually, but you’ll have to tune into the next episode next week!
Human nature has some in-built resistance to God that results from original sin. There is some basic rebelliousness within us, a stubborn pride leading to the blindness and the oppression spoken of in today’s gospel. By myself it is impossible for me to lift myself out of the quicksand of my own selfishness. But Jesus has come to join me, to lead me, to save me, and this is the powerful Good News announced in the Nazareth Synagogue.
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Sunday of the Word of God
https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2021/01/19/sunday-of-the-word-of-god-24-january-2021/
Introduction
In his Apostolic Letter of 30 September 2019, Aperuit illis Pope Francis established that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is to be the Sunday of the Word of God. He had already proposed something similar at the end of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. Sunday of the Word of God is a day to be devoted to the celebration, study, and spreading of the Word of God. Pope Francis is clear from the very first paragraph of this letter that the relationship between the Risen Lord, a community of believers, and sacred Scripture is essential to who we are as Christians.
The Sunday assembly gathering to celebrate the Eucharist is the unique moment in the week where a community gathers in a particular place and when their communal identity is nourished by Word and Sacrament. An important advance in 20th century theological reflection is that every sacramental celebration is founded and constructed upon the Word of God, and that every proclamation of the Word of God is sacramental.
Sunday of the Word of God is not a new feast! After all, the Word of God is proclaimed at every Sunday Eucharist, and one of the great blessings of the liturgical reform and renewal flowing from the Second Vatican Council is a greater appreciation of the foundational role of the Word of God in every liturgical celebration. The reform of the lectionary has led to much more scripture being proclaimed during our liturgical gatherings and a greater awareness of the role of the Word of God in the life of faith.
This Sunday builds on the texts and prayers of the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time and is conscious that it comes just after the celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. While we are not yet united around the table of the Eucharist, we do share on many Sundays of the year the same scriptural readings in our different Christian assemblies. Pope Francis urges us to strengthen our bonds with the Jewish people and to continue our prayer for Christian unity.
This Sunday is a time when the community is called to give greater attention not just to the Word of God. It is also urged to reflect on how we honour that Word in our celebrations, the books that we proclaim the Word from. Is the Gospel book carried in procession? Is it a well-made book that shows forth its life-giving content? Is it honoured with incense, and do we sing during the Gospel procession? Are the readers who proclaim the Word formed in the art of proclamation, and the knowledge of what they are announcing?
Pope Francis suggests in his letter that this Sunday is an ideal time to reflect on these issues. For presiders, it is also a call to reflect once again on their preaching of the Word of God. This Sunday has in the past offered an appropriate opportunity to commission and bless those who serve the community as readers, and initiate new ones to this essential ministry. If the parish community does not enthrone the Word of God every Sunday, maybe today is an opportunity to start. Another way of nourishing the role of scripture is praying quietly together in a lectio divina style of prayer.
Resources
Aperuit Illis – Apostolic Letter of Pope Francis instituting the Sunday of the Word of God :
Note from the the Vatican on Sunday of the Word of God 2021:
What is the Word of God?
We often identify the Bible as the Word of God. This is not wrong, but God speaks to our hearts in many different ways. For instance, he speaks to us in prayer and through our conscience, and often through other people. Hence, the Word of God covers much more than a printed book. Nevertheless, the Bible is the privileged collection of communications between God and his people. These stories and poems have nourished the lives of the people of Israel and the Christian Church right through the centuries, and they continue to nourish us today. They tell the story of God’s love and our salvation from ancient times onwards. The scriptural texts offer us both challenge and encouragement for our lives, and are especially valuable to us through the hope they offer us at dark moments.
The Holy Spirit and the Scriptures
The Holy Spirit was at work in the whole process of the formation of the Scriptures. This is why, even though many people across different times and places contributed to the writing, we believe that the Scriptures are divinely inspired. But the Holy Spirit’s work does not come to an end with the writing of the text. The Holy Spirit, who dwells in us by virtue of our baptism, is also at work in us as we listen to the text. Therefore, through the Spirit’s inspiration, the words of Scripture can become a living Word of the Lord to us here and now.
23 January 2022 – Third Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Key Message:
The more the anointing of God, the more useful we will be!!
Homily:
The Takeaway from the First Reading:
When we read the First reading, we remember that it portrays the sequence of the first half of our Masses of these days. The prayer starts with people raising up, adoration of Almighty God, reading of scriptures and then interpretation. The people wept on listening to the scriptures because the Word of God convicted them like a mirror. When we see ourselves in a mirror, then we come to know the defects in our physical appearance. Similarly, when we listen to the Word of God, the defects in our souls become visible to our spiritual eyes. We become aware of whether our ways are God’s ways or not. As we read through the Word of God, let us read it slowly. When we read it slowly we will be able to think and interpret the message. The Holy Spirit will help you in understanding it and putting it into action.
The Takeaway from the Second Reading:
The second reading beautifully says that God does not discriminate against us based on our role, for Him all of us are precious. Whether we have the gift of miracles or not, whether we have the gift of healing or not, whether we have the gift of tongues or not, He does not mind. God gives us gifts according to the roles He has anointed us with. God blesses us with the gifts to cater to our responsibilities.
The Takeaway from the Gospel Reading:
The Gospel explains the purpose of the anointing of the Spirit of the Lord, on our Lord Jesus – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
As we have seen in the second reading also, every anointing comes with a purpose.
Let us consider how our Lord Jesus accomplished the purpose of His life with His anointing:
1. Release to the captives:
2 Timothy 2:25 -> God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. When we commit sin, the devil traps us in doing his will. We will encounter situations when we do not want to injure anyone but without our knowing we will do it. The more we fall into sin, the more the devil will try to trap us. But when we repent for our sins, our Lord Jesus immediately releases us from the devil’s traps (captivity).
2. Recovery of the sight to the blind:
Ephesians 4:17: They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. The blindness here denotes the ignorance of God’s love and the truth of His Kingdom. Jesus went on preaching the principles of God for days together. He taught them from the mountain top, He taught them from the wilderness, He also taught them from the sea, sitting on a boat. People forgot their food and water and did not leave Him for days together. They were just hooked on His gracious teaching about God’s kingdom and they came to the knowledge of the truth.
3. To let the oppressed go free:
The good thief was not afraid of dying but He was afraid of what would happen to His soul after His death. He was condemning Himself because of His sinful past. His sins oppressed him with a sense of guilt. But in a fraction of a second, our Lord Jesus set Him free with His promise of Heaven. What freedom at the time of death!! Similarly, sin may lead to different kinds of oppressions like sickness, becoming devil possessed, prayerlessness, etc. But whatever may be the kind of oppression, Jesus releases all of us.
4. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour:
Jesus cured the sick, lepers, gave sight to the blind, opened the ears of the deaf, made the mute speak, drove away devils, brought the dead back to life and so on and on. His favours were countless as the Gospel of John indicates the world would not suffice if we had to write down all His good works. Because of the Lord’s favour, there was joy everywhere.
The scripture says, “As the Spirit of the Lord rested on Jesus, He went about doing good…” We need to humble ourselves and plead for more and more anointing of the Spirit of God. Luke 11:13 says, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Our Lord Jesus did not say that the Holy Spirit shall be given only to chosen few, but the Holy Spirit will be given to all who ask. Let us ask for more and more anointing and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Let us all become carriers of the Spirit of God!!
Tips to do the Takeaways:
1. Bible reading for children too:
In the first reading we read, “in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law”. The scriptures were read to men, women and all children who were of understandable age. So even if our children are not able to read the Bible on their own, if they can understand, we will ensure that we read out the Bible scriptures to them.
2. Anointing for the role:
The second reading says about the different gifts provided to the different members of the Body of Christ. He gives the anointing to each one of us to be able to run our own specific race. The grace will be sufficient enough for us to perform our duties. We can be the President of our nation or a school teacher or a janitor or a medical officer, God will always provide us with the anointing to do our specific job. It does not mean that He differentiates between a President of a country or a school teacher, but He provides the knowledge and grace to do his/her particular job. Let us not allow ourselves to be jealous of others’ roles but be zealous in performing our duties.
3. Rejection faced by our Lord Jesus:
It is astonishing to know from today’s Gospel that though Jesus was brought up in Nazareth, He could not start His ministry from there. He started elsewhere and His fame spread throughout the countryside. He taught in their synagogues and everyone praised Him. But when He came to his hometown, people could not see Him as a prophet. They were seeing him as a normal son born to a carpenter. They could not see the hand of Almighty Father upon Him. They drove our Lord Jesus out of the town and even wanted to throw Him down the cliff. How much agony our Lord Jesus would have suffered because of being rejected by His own neighbourhood?
The Word of God also says that Jesus grew up in Nazareth in favour of God and men. So when Jesus was growing up like a normal child, He had good favour with His people. But when He returned as a mighty prophet of Almighty God, He was rejected by His own people. This is a certain kind of problem all the prophets face. Prophets face loneliness, suffer hunger, thirst, lack of recognition and so on. Their work is tough but they will have the courage to face the opposition by God’s grace.
In our daily prayers, let us seek for more and more anointing of the Holy Spirit!!
23 Jan – Third Sunday in Ordinary Time…
Purification of motive is something of axial importance in the Christian life. The modern world encourages us to clock up ‘achievements’ and thus to ‘get ahead’ in rivalry with others who are less ‘productive.’ This generates an anxious struggle which becomes a kind of mental slavery. Rather than making a pure offering to the greater glory of God we labour in the service of ego. “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).
Ego runs rampant and causes endemic problems in human life, a source of conflict. It poisons everything, and gives everything the same insipid taste, the stale taste of ego, of an obsessive and abstract formation. The self, which is ‘always odious’ (Pascal), is addicted to its own comfort, aggrandizement, and cosy illusions. To curb it is an endless task, for which the church invented various methods in tradition. We are taught to overcome self-centredness by bowing down before God, in prayers such as the Morning Offering or St Ignatius’s ‘Suscipe’: ‘Take into thy hands, O Lord, my entire liberty; receive my memory, my understanding, and my whole will.’ But is solitary prayer a fully effective vaccination against the obdurate condition of self-imprisonment?
Purification of motive has to do with the state of our heart before God. But it also has to do with how we relate to others. Those who live in a family, or a community, have daily opportunities of leaving the quest of self behind for the good of the family or the community. A father, holding his newborn child, can undergo a revolution in his whole way of living, realizing that here is something more important than himself, something he would be ready to die for. Members of a team, or of an army, or a hospital staff, or a group embarked on some creative enterprise or scientific project might similarly forget self, with all its bothersome petty worries, and embark on a liberating engagement with reality, a thoroughly meaningful investment of their lives in a greater cause.
Today’s second reading reminds us that the Christian life is not the project of isolated individuals, but rather of a family or a community united in Christ, embarked together on a creative project that we call the Kingdom of God. When we come together as a community we find a wholesome perspective on our lives, as a people on the way together to a promised future. Listening to Scripture together and sharing the Eucharist, we realize that our individual efforts are not just a blind struggle for survival or a self-centred push to impose ourselves, but are welcomed by the community as a contribution to building up the body of Christ.
When we hold up the bread and wine at the Offertory, we are gathering together all our efforts, seeing them as a gift from the Creator and to the Creator. Such an action has a purifying effect, abolishing servile or ego-centred attitudes to work and giving it a sacred meaning. It dissolves the fraught relationships that make the effort to achieve and produce into a struggle of each against all, bellum omnium contra omnes. Sharing our lives with others and offering them to the Lord we enter a community where all are appreciated, all are welcome, and the discriminatory and mean-minded standards of judgement prevailing in the world fall away.
‘For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and all were made to drink of one Spirit.’ ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (2 Cor 3:17), freedom from the prison of self, freedom for the joy of loving creativity.
‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.’
The age of Covid has thrown many people back on their individual solitary lives, linked to the human race only by their computer screen. It’s true that the social media can put one in touch with thousands of people throughout the world, and that Zoom meetings have actually increased our range of contacts. But something is missing. Our constant engagement with virtual reality can weaken our sense of the real. We become self-enclosed monads, able to cancel whatever we do not immediately like in those others who appear on our screen just by pressing ‘delete’ or ‘block.’ Our choices and the algorithms determining what the providers serve up to us enclose us in a bubble or an echo-chamber. Some end up living in a world of conspiracy theories, or of cultic formations.
Under Covid regimes, the relationships built up in a vibrant church community may have become etiolated or may have lapsed altogether. It is time to realize what we have been missing and to reflect deeply on the power of presence that the Eucharist enables: presence to one another, to new people, to new messages from Scripture or preaching that shake us out of our ruts, to the presence of the Spirit in our shared prayer and singing, and to the presence of Christ in the community, in his word, and in his full and real presence in the breaking of bread. May the Lord turn our hearts around so that we may worthily and joyfully celebrate the Eucharist, and so that our lives are marked by the the eucharistic qualities of gift, communion, dedication, and thanksgiving.