Homily
for January 21, 2007
Liturgical Year C - Cycle I
3th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Dcn. Ray Alcouffe Topic:
God's Love
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Gospel
Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Since many have
undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that
have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from
the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I
too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to
write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent
Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you
have received.
Jesus returned to
Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him
spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and
was praised by all.
He came to
Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his
custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read and
was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and
found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He
has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to
the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year
acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the
attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked
intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is
fulfilled in your hearing.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Today this
scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
On a cold, gloomy, January day like today, these words of Jesus in St.
Luke’s Gospel, come to us like a patch of blue sky that lets the light
of the sun through to illuminate the beauty that is our surroundings.
These words from Isaiah - “He has anointed me to bring glad tidings to
the poor, he has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery
of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free”, that Jesus
ascribes to himself, are an announcement of the beginning of his
mission to us. We know what this means because we know the story, we
know God’s story, a story in which we have a part. It is a love story.
It is a love story that surpasses all the other love stories we know
because God is love.
Like all stories, God’s story has three basic parts. I will describe
them as Peter Kreeft does - first a situation is set up, then it is
upset, and thirdly it is reset - either successfully (a happy ending)
or not (sad ending). The setup is the description of a world and
characters and a life - this is the setting. Then the upset is a
problem, an irritant that gets the plot and the characters moving.
Finally, in the reset, the conflict is dealt with and hopefully
resolved or at least addressed. Thus, situation, challenge, and
response are the three stages of every story.
God’s story is no exception probably because God’s story is the model
for all our stories. In Christian theology, we name these three stages
in God’s story, creation, the fall, and redemption. There is another
ingredient that underlies all the stages in God’s story, the force that
moves the plot along, the power that carries the story to its
successful conclusion - love. It is God’s love and the love of God that
underlies this whole story and especially our part in it.
Let’s move to the first stage of the story - creation. We can ponder
and debate the how of the creation of the universe, but we know for
sure the why - it is God’s love. Love is by definition self-giving, it
cannot be contained in anything. Thus, the universe is the result of
any ongoing explosion of love from God. Moreover, it reaches its climax
in the creation of persons - beings in the image and likeness of God.
Each one of us can say that God from the beginning, willed me (and the
universe that eventually produced me) into existence as a process of
absolute love. I am here because God loves me and for no other reason
and for sure it is not by chance. However, the story does not stop
there; my existence is not the end of the story for me or for God.
Thus, we have the setting of God’s story: the creation of the universe
and of each one of us in the image and likeness of God. Since this
creation of persons is done from love and love does not enslave, but
frees the beloved, God has given us free will.
This introduces us to the second stage of the story, the fall. We are
created free to do whatever we want that is in our power to do. God,
who is love, does not coerce us, and thus we sin. God knows this; from
the beginning God knew that in giving us free will, the supreme
spiritual gift, we would fall...we would be Judas, Stalin, or
Hitler...but God did it anyway. This gift of free will is so essential
to our being, that God allows us to turn away from God in sin. Because
only in freedom can we sin. Only love gives us the freedom to sin.
Without the freedom to sin, there is no freedom to love, which is
essential to our being. Thus, it is God who gives us this freedom
because God loves us that much. The fall tells us that we use this
freedom to abuse this most important fruit of God’s love. The fall
tells us that even though love gives us the power to choose life, we
instead heed the voice that urges us to choose death. This happens when
we abort a child, one who God so loved that he created the universe in
order to create that child. This happens when we become that voice that
urges the choice of death whether of a child or of a prisoner condemned
to death. This happens when we condone any kind of oppression of
another person. In the name of freedom sin enter our life and we see
and experience suffering throughout the world. Yet out of love, God
allows it. If this were the end of the story, it would be too
depressing to tell let alone to live.
Love is incredible power. It is greater than any force in the universe
and so love overcomes our fall. That is the third stage of God’s story,
what we call redemption. As we hear this stage of God’s story, we need
to have faith in this love, we need to have faith that love conquers
all and it is in this state we so desire to live. Down deep we want to
live in a world of love, we do not want a world of suffering and death.
It is for this that we need a redeemer - we cannot overcome by
ourselves. That is the story told in the bulk of scripture. That love,
that God will overcome, because that is what is the will of God. We are
given a snippet of this story in the episode from the book of Nehemiah.
The people of Israel, God’s chosen people, have just returned from
their captivity in Babylon. They return as a people who have lost their
identity - their whole culture has been devastated - especially their
perceived relationship to God. Then they heard God’s word in the Torah
read and explained to them by Ezra and they realize that God’s love for
them has not abated. They, as a people, are moved to tears and their
faith in God’s promises is renewed as they set about reconstructing
their lives. They are on the path to redemption through the love of God.
Then we come to Luke’s Gospel, which presents the climax of God’s story
- the redeemer has come and He is God himself. Then is love and God
made manifest as the final step to redemption. Jesus says he is the
fulfillment of the promises of God in scripture. This is the Gospel,
the good news that Luke proclaims. This is perfect love come into the
world and the world will not overcome it. That is Jesus’ promise to us.
Thus, we now live in the last phase of the third stage of God’s story -
one that can be called the age of the Holy Spirit. An age where we
participate in God’s plan to change all of our no’s to God’s love to
yes’s. Moreover, we can do it because the promised Holy Spirit is
within us.
Beginning this gloomy January, we will hear throughout the year, week
after week, the retelling of God’s story from scripture and our
tradition. This is to refresh us as if it were a new story we were
hearing and to give us assurance that our destiny is governed by God’s
love and that that love never fails.