Being Amazed and Astonished Anew at Jesus’ Words, 22nd Tuesday (II), August 30, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
August 30, 2022
1 Cor 2:10-16, Ps 145, Lk 4:31-37

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we meet Jesus teaching in a synagogue. After he was booted and almost killed from the Synagogue in Nazareth where he grew up — which we would have heard yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper Gospel for the Passion of St. John the Baptist — Jesus went to Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, where Peter, Andrew, James and John all lived and worked. In Nazareth when he taught, St. Luke tells us all were initially “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” but eventually doubts entered because they thought they knew him and those doubts quickly passed to rage and homicidal intentions.  Today in Capernaum, St. Luke says that those in the Synagogue “were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority” and later, after he had rebuked a demon, they were “all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out!”
• One of the most important aspects of our Christian response in faith is to be amazed and astonished at Jesus and at his words. This astonishment is an experience most of us, I hope, had when we first started living by faith, when our parents read to us from the Bible or from Bible stories and told us that the Bible contains the words of God himself; when we first began to pray and we recognized that God was listening to us with love; when we first discovered that the Eucharist is God and comes down from heaven on the altar, and dwells within the tabernacle, or loves us from the monstrance; when we first started to hear about Jesus’ great miracles, his multiplication of the loaves and fish, his walking on water, his casting out the devil like he does in today’s Gospel, his healing the sick, and his rising from the dead. This is an amazement and astonishment that likewise would have enveloped us at the time of our becoming aware of God’s calling us to follow him in a special way as his disciples on the road to holiness. But we are vulnerable and prone to losing that amazement and astonishment. The things of God can start to become routine. We can cease to view with amazement the fact that God has spoken to us in Sacred Scripture, that he listens to us in prayer, that he awaits us with love in the Eucharist wanting to nourish us with the only nourishment worthy of our souls, that he thirsts to forgive us in the Sacrament of his Mercy, that he is risen and alive and seeks to walk with us throughout each day, that he can continue to work great miracles if we approach him with faith and it really is in alignment with what’s best. We can begin to take things for granted, to “domesticate” Jesus, and lose our awe. It’s one of the saddest things that can happen in the life of faith. Real faith always brings with it this childlike astonishment and amazement before God and what God has done and is doing. It’s important for us all to ask the Lord for the gift never to lose this holy awe and to help us grow in it each day. How can God, who never gives us stones when we ask for loaves of bread, refuse such a humble, filial prayer?
• There’s a particular type of awe that we’re called to ponder in today’s Gospel. It’s astonishment at Jesus’ teaching, at the power of his word. St. Luke tells us that the people in the Capernaum synagogue were amazed because “he spoke with authority.” Most of their rabbis — as well as the Scribes, Pharisees and anyone who tried to teach the Jewish faith — would normally instruct by citing passages from the Hebrew Bible or from the oral tradition of the rabbis. They were constantly using footnotes to ground what they were saying. Jesus didn’t do that. He spoke as if he were the author — that’s what it means to speak with authority — because he was the author! We see this clearly in the way that he used parables. We see even more strikingly in how he preached the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with what they knew from the Mosaic law and then taking the teaching much further by declaring, “But I say to you.” Much like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, when Jesus started to do this their hearts began to burn, those in the Capernaum synagogue could sense that they were hearing the truth from one who knows. Do we accept Jesus’ authority? Do we recognize that his teachings are not just opinions, not just one idea of the way things should be, but are the truth? Especially in an age in which Jesus’ teaching is rejected by many because it doesn’t align with modern ideas of power, or possession, or pleasure, it is important that we recover a sense of wonder and gratitude for Jesus’ teaching, that the Lord is just in all his ways, faithful in all his words and holy in all his works.
• Recovering this astonishment at Jesus’ word is one of the principal works of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul tells us in today’s first reading that “no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God.” He adds, however, that “we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God,” and that we are then helped by the spirit to “speak about [the things freely given us by God] … with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.” The world needs that truly spiritual perspective, of amazed hearers of the world and astonished apostolic echoes. When we’re truly amazed and astonished at Jesus’ teaching, the Holy Spirit helps us to understand it according to an inner logic and then makes us capable of passing on that understanding not just as any old words but as words that astonish and amaze us just as much in proclaiming them as they do when we hear and read them. And that amazement and astonishment are contagious when it is met by those listening with faith. That’s one way we can help remind others of the reason for the hope we bear with in.
• Jesus’ most astonishing words of all are those that he says through the accent of his priests each day, when he takes simple bread and wine and changes them into himself. He does this by his authority as God, but he also does it by his love as our Redeemer. Today he comes not to the Capernaum synagogue, but here to this beautiful Church of Notre Dame, and even more particularly, he comes to each one of us, seeking to make us his temple and speak with authority to us from within throughout the day. Let us ask the Spirit who helps us to understand the things of God to give us greater amazement at this tremendous mystery as we prepare to great him with the astonishment of the Roman Centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my [soul] shall be healed.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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