Third Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C

Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 15

1 Corinthians 12:12-30

or 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 27

Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

We might get asked on occasion, “Have you read the whole Bible?” That’s quite a feat to do, cover to cover, in its presented, printed order. If you perdure through the genealogies of Genesis, you’ll likely get stuck in the liturgical legislation of Leviticus. 

As God’s people are gathered before the newly rebuilt Temple in the first reading, “the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly” and “read out of the book from daybreak till midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand; and all the people listened attentively.” With the help of Levite scholars, they were given explanations and interpretations, and the people wept in grief in response because they had fallen far short of the proper observance of the law. In a posture of worship, “they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the LORD, their faces to the ground.” The clergymen encouraged them to rejoice and celebrate the restoration of Scripture’s role in their lives. 

How much did they read that day? The whole Torah would take over 15 hours. We are inevitably crunched with limited time both in our own private prayerful reading and the official Lectionary cycle at Mass. We require not just trained academic experts but holy consecrated people whose lives are dedicated to the service of God for authentic interpretation of the entirety of Scripture from the heart of the Church. That doesn’t just include monks, nuns, priests and popes; above all, parents remain the primary educators of their children in the ways of faith with a grave responsibility to transmit to them the fullness of truth that it contains … including the Bible.

For that we need a manifold variety of holy witnesses as expressed in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, with his famous analogy of the Body of Christ, the Church: “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” Varied yet reliable voices are necessary for the purely practical, logical reason that nobody does everything all alone: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work mighty deeds?” We must have help from saints and saints in the making (including one another) to integrate the meaning of the Biblical narrative into our personal spiritual lives. As St. Luke notes, “those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us.”

In our age of polarized divisions, we should remember our interdependence, because “But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.” We all should be afforded the opportunity of this kind of spiritual formation the Church. The Psalmist says, “The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul … The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart.” We could all use more of that joy, not unlike the people listening to Ezra. Sadly, many people consider the Bible and the Church mechanisms of negative restriction rather than the positive promise of everlasting holiness.

Christ Himself read from the Scriptures; He went “according to His custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day.” Just as with Ezra outside the Temple, “the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at Him.” That passage from Isaiah was appointed for the Day of Atonement, the highest Jewish holy day, commemorating the forgiveness of sins. That makes sense. The Messiah, Whose Holy Name means “the Lord saves,” gave a very short sermon: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” There’s cause for joy.

Our brief Mass readings are arranged to reflect the liturgical year with its solemnities, festal times, and penitential seasons. They all have Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection for their ultimate reference point; all Scripture passages are indeed fulfilled in His presence, that is to say, through the tradition of the Church, His mystical Body, under the guidance of those entrusted with our spiritual care. The Bible was never meant as a book of the conventional variety, to be read front to back, but rather as the living word of God that inspires worship of Him and true happiness for us.