Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 27, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
January 27, 2024

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday when we will see him enter a synagogue on the Sabbath day and teach. All those who listened to him, St. Mark tells us, were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught with authority and not like the scribes.” He then showed the tremendous power of his authoritative words by silencing and casting out a demon from a man, which amazed the crowd even further. “What is this?,” they asked, “A new teaching, with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
• The same Jesus who entered the Capernaum synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath enters our parishes on the Christian Sabbath. And he teaches with the same authority he wielded two thousand years ago. He speaks to us in the word of God and later he who created the heavens and the earth with his word, who called fishermen and tax collectors to follow him so powerfully that at his summons they immediately got up and did so, does something far more amazing than cast out a devil or silence a stormy sea. He changes bread and wine into Himself, into his body and blood, and casts himself into us. If we recognize what is really going on, if we awaken to the power of his words, people today ought to be far more amazed than Jesus’ first listeners two millennia ago.
• Jesus teaches unlike any other teacher who has ever come, before or after. His contemporaries said he “taught with authority, unlike the scribes.” The scribes, the ancient Biblical scholars, always used to cite Sacred Scripture or Jewish tradition, to base their teachings on the authority of the word of God. That was obviously an appropriate way for them to teach, sharing their interpretations of God’s word rather than merely their own opinions. But Jesus didn’t need to cite the word of God, because he is the word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he contrasted himself to what Moses, their greatest teacher about the ways of God until then, had said to them on behalf of God in the desert: “You have heard that it was said — in other words, Moses said to you — ‘you shall not kill…’ ‘you shall not commit adultery… ,’ ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…,’ but I say to you,  you shall not even be angry with a brother, or look on a woman with lust in your heart, or if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other as well” (Mt 5:20-45). Jesus showed he was indeed capable of saying, “But I say to you,” in contrast to what the greatest figure in salvation history until then had said.
• Authority comes from the Latin word auctor for “author,” and Jesus spoke with authority because he is the author, the creator, of man, woman and the world. To capture just a little of what it must have been like to listen to Jesus talk about God, about the world, about man, and about faith and about morality, it would be better than listening to the Wright Brothers talk about airplanes, Henry Ford talk about cars, Thomas Edison describe electricity, Steve Jobs talk about iPhones, or John McCarthy talk about Artificial Intelligence. They could all speak with stunning authority because they were the “authors,” the inventors, of what we now take for granted. That’s just a glimpse of what it would have been like to be in that Capernaum Synagogue listening to Jesus, who is the author of the world, the one through whom we and all things were made.
• Even if we can’t go back in a time machine to the Capernaum Synagogue, we can and should have that experience of amazement and astonishment, because the same Jesus continues to teach us with that same amazing authority.
  • He does so, first, at Mass. The fathers of the Second Vatican Council stressed that “when the Holy Scriptures are read in Church, it is Christ himself who speaks” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7). That’s why we stand at Mass when the Gospel is proclaimed, out of reverence and respect for Christ who himself is announcing the words of the Gospel through his minister.
  • He does so through prayer, especially when we meditate on his holy words, the authority and astonishing quality of which have no expiration date.
  • Christ also speaks to us through the teaching of the Church, to whom he gave his own amazing authority to continue his saving work. Before ascending into heaven, he said to his apostles: “Full authority — total, astonishing and amazing authority — in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:18-20). The Church has been given, we have been given, Jesus’ astonishing and amazing authority with which to proclaim his words to others.
  • Jesus, fourth, gave that authority in a special way to the visible head of the Church he founded. He told Peter that he was the rock on whom he was going to build his Church and then gave him the authority even to open and lock the way to heaven: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:19). The Church firmly believes that that authority was passed down to St. Peter’s successors — all the way down to John Paul, Benedict and Pope Francis — when the Pope teaches in a definitive way about the faith binding for all Christians everywhere and in every generation.
  • And Christ also gave his authority to the apostles as a whole (and their successors, the bishops). When Jesus sent out the apostles, he said to them, “Whoever hears you hears me, and whoever rejects you rejects me” (Lk 10:16). That’s why we listen to the bishops with reverence, for, when they teach in communion with Christ, they share not just their opinions, but his words of eternal life.
• Jesus continues to teach with staggering power in each of these ways. The first question for us today, therefore, is: How do I respond to the Lord’s teaching? Am I amazed and astonished by it? Am I grateful for it? If we genuinely are, then we will do what people normally do when they’re amazed: we’ll behave as if we can’t possibly get enough of his teaching. We’ll devour the Gospels. We’ll seek to enter much more deeply into his words through Bible Studies, prayerful lectio divina, podcasts like Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year, resources from the Augustine Institute, Word on Fire, Ascension Press and more. We’ll long to meet those who can open up the Word of God to us and help us to experience anew Jesus’ amazing and astonishing authority. There are some Catholics who live this way. Their fingerprints are all over their Bibles, they can’t read, listen and watch enough commentaries, books and programs to help them to understand better what God is saying, and they can’t keep themselves from sharing all they’re learning. They behave about God and the love letters he has given us in the Bible with even more enthusiasm than the fans of the Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens, San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions are cheering for their teams to win the Super Bowl.
• The second question for us with regard to Jesus’ amazing, astonishing and authoritative teaching is obviously: Do I act on it? Do I hear Jesus’ words as words to be done and lived or am I what St. James would call an “idle listener,” allowing Jesus’ words to fall on hardened, rocky or thorny soil bearing no fruit? If we genuinely recognize the awesome gift of Jesus’ teaching, we will respond to it, even when it’s challenging, by trying to align our life to it as we seek to unite our whole life to Jesus, the Word made flesh. The model for us in doing so is always our Lady, who responded to the Lord’s amazing and astonishing words to her through the Archangel Gabriel by saying, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Mary is interceding for us to show our amazement by receiving God’s help to become living commentaries of what God says to us, to digest and assimilate every word that comes from God’s mouth.
• One of my favorite Catholics hymns, one that I had sung at my first Masses and regularly sing or say to God in prayer, is “Word of God Come Down on Earth.” The lyrics summarize the type of amazement we’re supposed to have to God’s word. We pray, “Word of God, come down on earth, living rain from heaven descending; touch our hearts and bring to birth faith and hope and love unending. Word almighty we revere you; Word made flesh, we long to hear you.” We’re called to long for God’s word more than a parched man longs for water. The second verse continues, “Word eternal, ‘throned on high, Word that brought to life creation, Word that came from heaven to die, crucified for our salvation. Saving Word, the world restoring, speak to us, your love outpouring.” When God speaks to us, he is pouring out his love! The third verse focuses on the power of God’s word: “Word that caused blind eyes to see, speak and heal our mortal blindness; deaf we are: our healer be; loose our tongues to tell your kindness; Be our Word in pity spoken; heal the world, by our sin broken.” And the final verse turns to the union between the “two tables” at Mass, the table of God’s word and the table of the Eucharist. We sing, “Word that speaks your Father’s love, one with him beyond all telling, Word that sends us from above God the Spirit, with us dwelling, Word of truth, to all truth lead us, Word of life, with one Bread feed us.” Jesus is that Word of God. He is the One who comes down on earth, to touch us, to enter into Holy Communion with us. This Sunday, as we prepare to hear his Word at Mass, we prepare to shout with gratitude, “Thanks be to God!” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!”  We turn to him and ask him to touch us in such a way as to make us burn for him with longing and amazement, to help soften in us whatever hardness there is in our hearts, so that, led to all truth and nourished by him, we may become the echoes of his astonishing and amazing Word among our family and friends in this world and, one day, among the choirs of saints and angels in eternal awe around the heavenly throne.

The Gospel passages on which the homily was based was: