26 January 2025 – 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) | Sunday of the Word of God

by Fr Joachim Robert

Dear friends, on this 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, as Father mentioned, we focus, the church focuses on the centrality of the Word of God in our lives. And the centrality of the Word of God in our lives must come from a deep lived experiences of our lives. It is not what we say but how we live the Word of God at the centre of every day living.

And today, as you look at the Responsorial Psalm, it mentions:
Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life.

The Word of God is Spirit and they are life.

And as we look at these readings, dear friends, we gradually come to a deeper realisation of who God is and how the Word of God inspires us and makes us have a new purpose, have a new beginning and how the Word of God renews our life.

And as I was preparing for this homily and I was preparing/reading through these Readings, one of the word that came to mind was these moments of transition. Transition from the past to the present, from the present to the future. And these moments of transition must give us new hope founded in God’s word and God’s spirit.

As I was cleaning my room and in this moment of transition, many of the books perhaps many of the things that I used to cherish before may not feel as important now as it was before. Perhaps I have already given back all those notes back to the teachers, you know. But in these moments of transition, it gives me a deeper moment of appreciation, a deeper moment of gratitude of what I have gone through so that I can find my hope in God’s word and God’s love in my life.

But when we are in this moment of transition, dear friends, and as we have begun this whole Jubilee Year of Hope where we are called to reconstruct, we are called to rebuild and we are called to look at our own selves to see how we can restore ourselves in our identity with God. And as we look at these moments, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, we are called to look forward in hope, trusting that God’s word and God’s love in our lives may continue to take root and continue to transform us.

And how do we find hope? How do we do it?

If you take a look at the First Reading of today from the book of Nehemiah, we see that Israel was coming out of captivity. They were under the Babylonian exile and they were looking forward to enter into this new place, going back to their homeland. And when they were in exile and looking forward going to their homeland, they found that opportunity of reconstructing, of rebuilding, of restoring themselves in God.

As we look at ourselves dear friends, as I mentioned just now when we look back at our past, perhaps there are so many things in our rooms, in our houses, that we declutter and we repurpose. It is a moment that we need to go back.

Yes, Israel was a people who were coming out of exile but as they come out of exile, they enter into a new place with utter destruction. Things that they perhaps had to deal with, perhaps broken buildings, perhaps they had to rebuild their lives, rebuild their city, rebuild all that was around them.

But as you look at the First Reading of today, rather than focusing on all the externals, Nehemiah and Ezra called them together and they allowed God’s word to be proclaimed. And when they allowed God’s word to be proclaimed, the words of scripture tells us:
Then Nehemiah – His Excellency – and Ezra, the priest and scribe, of the Levites who were instructing the people said to all the people, ‘This day is sacred to the Lord, your God. Do not be mournful, do not weep for all the people were in tears as they listened to the Word of God and the Word of the Law.

And here, dear friends, as we enter into this time, as we enter into those broken areas of our lives, as we take a deep look at all the areas perhaps that has been broken in our lives in this Jubilee Year of Hope, let us look forward and put God at the centre of everything that we do and allow the Word of God to transform us. As the words of scripture says:
The people were all in tears as they listened to the words of the Law.

Because the word of the law, dear friends, the Word of God transform us, shapes us and makes us come to this new realisation of who we are in God.

And as we look at those moments, looking forward, as we enter into that Promised Land trusting in God’s promises and trusting in God’s love in our lives and as we put the Word of God at the centre, we allow the Word of God to be our hope. And when we allow the Word of God to be our hope, as we move forward in whatever circumstances that we are confronted with, we are indeed allowing ourselves to be transformed by God’s word and God’s love.

And as we look at the Second Reading of today from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, here too once again we see Saint Paul is confronted with a community of utter division. A community that is full of jealousy, full of factions, full of loyalties among them and they forget what their baptismal call was.

And Saint Paul inspires them and proposes them to reappreciate what God has done in their life by the virtue of their baptism. And when they rediscover those moments of baptism, they are called to look to the Spirit, to allow the Spirit to transform them and allow the Spirit to guide their actions.

Because as individuals, dear friends, we do not monopolise the Holy Spirit. We need to remember that the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of unity. One Spirit that gives life. A Spirit that unites. A Spirit that allows charisms to take place. And we need to remember that as church, we need to rediscover what unity means.

We may defer in our gifts. We may differ in our ministries. We may differ in our charisms. We may differ in our gifts because each one of us are gifted differently. And the path that the church takes is to respect one another, to reappreciate one another and to rediscover that each one of us have God’s Spirit within us because if we allow God’s Spirit to sustain us, we will respect. If we allow God’s Spirit to sustain us, we will build each other, we will support one another, we will care for one another and we need to embrace that this whole walk of unity is not a walk of uniformity but a walk of unity in diversity.

And as we look at the Gospel once again, we see that Saint Luke says in the first line. He says:
Seeing that many of others who have undertaken to draw up accounts of the events that have taken place among us.

And as Saint Luke writes these accounts, eyewitness accounts, he gathers them and after gathering them, he carefully goes through, one by one, to see where the Spirit is. And he writes it to Theophilus to give him an account so that he can strengthen his faith.

And as we look at ourselves, dear friends, as we look at our community, as we look at our families, we must be able to recognise, yes, our families, communities may be broken but there exists the Spirit of God in them. The Spirit of unity, the Spirit of love. And we must be able to recognise those Spirit that is present because when we are able to recognise those that are present, the Spirit of God that is present in our families, then we can inspire one another. We can strengthen one another. And when we are able to strengthen one another, we build this community of love.

And each one of us, dear friends, as we walk in this Jubilee Year of Hope, and as we look at our own brokenness, as we look at the future, perhaps the rebuilding that we need to do, we need to be reminded and Saint Luke reminds us beautifully in the Reading taken from the Prophet Isaiah when Jesus was handed down the scroll. They said:
The spirit of the Lord has been given to me for he has anointed me, he has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight and to set the downtrodden free and to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.

The year of the Lord’s favour is hear, dear friends. And you and I are called to be participants in this Jubilee Year, to be messengers of hope, to be agents of hope and to become proclaimers of God’s hope towards one another. And let us do this preparation by putting the centrality of God’s word in our lives.

Let us pray that the Holy Spirit may inspire us to cherish, to reaffirm and to rediscover what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

And I would like to leave with you three words. Three words of how we can appreciate the Word of God.

The first that we must remember is the three ‘Rs’. The first ‘R’ is that the Word of God is reliable. That the Word of God is not some word that comes out in the air. It is founded on experiences of God. It is founded on experiences of people’s life and we must remember that the Word of God is reliable.

And the second ‘R’ that we need to remember is that the Word of God reaffirms us in our identity of who we are. And when we are reaffirmed in our identity of who we are, we are able to take that step forward, trusting that with God we can transform, we can be molded, we can be shaped.

And the third thing that we need to remember with the ‘R’ is that the Word of God renews our life.

Today as we celebrate the Word of God, dear friends, let us remember the Word of God is reliable, the Word of God reaffirms and the Word of God renews us.

And let us pray for this grace of transformation that we allow the Word of God to take root like the experience of the Israelites during the time when they were in exile, moving towards the Promised Land.

Our promised land is in heaven.

The journey that we take is a journey of transformation, a journey of hope and a journey of love.

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