Sunday of the Word of God – 26 January
Making the Scriptures
Part of our Everyday Lives
What is the Word of God?
We often identify the Bible as the Word of God. This is not wrong but God speaks to our hearts in many different ways. For instance, He speaks to us in prayer and through our conscience and often through other people. Hence, the Word of God covers much more than a printed book. Nevertheless, the Bible is the privileged collection of communications between God and His people. These stories and poems have nourished the lives of the people of Israel and the Christian Church, right through the centuries and they continue to nourish us today. They tell the story of God’s love and our salvation from ancient times onwards. The scriptural texts offer us both challenge and encouragement for our lives and are especially valuable to us through the hope they offer us at dark moments.
The Holy Spirit and the Scriptures
The Holy Spirit was at work in the whole process of the formation of the Scriptures. This is why, even though many people across different times and places contributed to the writing, we believe that the Scriptures are divinely inspired. But the Holy Spirit’s work does not come to an end with the writing of the text. The Holy Spirit, who dwells in us by virtue of our baptism, is also at work in us as we listen to the text. Therefore, through the Spirit’s inspiration, the words of Scripture can become a living Word of the Lord to us here and now.
Opening the Law and the Prophets (see Luke 4:17) – On Reading the Old Testament as Christians
When Saint Luke, in his Gospel, portrays the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he does so in the following way:
“Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”(4:16–18).
For Luke, the one in whom Christians place their trust as their Lord and Saviour, who is—in the words of the Nicene Creed—God from God, Light from Light and who sits at the right hand of the Father, was, is and remains, a Jewish male from Galilee. Our Saviour is a Jew from Galilee. To lose sight of His essential and enduring Jewishness is to distort Jesus, it is to divorce Him from His people, and to blind us to the reality and power of the Word made flesh (see John 1:14).
Jesus, the Galilean Jew, began His “public” life with words from His Scriptures. His life ended with word from His Scriptures—in His anguish of the cross, He prays the beginning of Psalm 21 (22): “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” To express what He’s about and to say who He is, Jesus proclaims His Scriptures—what Christians call the Old Testament. Today also, truly to understand what God is doing in Christ (see 2 Cor 5:19), the followers of Christ are called to read and pray the Old Testament so that we may come to a sense of the mysteries that are veiled in all our lives and revealed in Christ (see St Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter § 27).
Because the Old Testament communicates the mysteries of God’s life and ours, to come to know God’s word in the Old Testament is to know the power of God. This is why St Jerome famously says that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ: – it is not that we gain “information” about Christ that is otherwise inaccessible, rather, to have one’s heart opened by the word of God is to come to know the one in whom the “the power and wisdom of God” has taken flesh. It is to know “Christ—the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24).
This means that Christians are called to read the Old Testament like Christ read it – in a way that opens the heart, that recognises the faithfulness of God to His people and to the everlasting covenant made with them, that sees in the words of the Law, the Prophets and the writings, the threshold of the Word of God.
To read like Christ is to see the Law not as a burden but as the revelation of God’s will.
To read like Christ is to see in the Psalms the most wonderful school of prayer.
To read like Christ is to submit oneself to the prophets’ call to justice and their witness to the power of God.
To read like Christ is to read as one who is “last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35), who avoids all haughtiness and refuses to put the other in the wrong.
Such a person resists the distortions of history which have caused so much suffering to God’s chosen people, the brothers and sisters of our Lord.
…The Proclaimed Word is a Word not just in the past but a Word here and now, given to this liturgical assembly to shape, challenge and sustain their ongoing following of the Lord. Every time a Christian community gathers, it is making a bold statement about where they have come from, who they are and where they hope one day to be. The Scriptures nourish the boldness of the community, once more today, we are urged to allow the Word of God to nourish us as both individuals and communities.
Jesus also calls to Himself a group of disciples in today’s gospel account. He invites them to come and walk in His ways. Through their response, they set out on a path of discipleship leaving all behind them, it is a way that will lead some of His followers to martyrdom and others to betrayal: words of fidelity and words of treachery. The Scriptures nurture the path of the disciples in their following of Jesus and walking in His ways, by taking the word and allowing it to shape and mould our identity as Christians. The Word proclaimed every Sunday in our Eucharistic celebration, the Word heard in the very ordinary circumstances of our daily lives, the words that we speak every moment, let all of them be, for us, moments of salvation and gifts to others….Catholic Bishops of Ireland
Official logo for the Sunday of the Word of God unveiled at Vatican
An icon of the encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus was chosen as the official logo for the worldwide celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God.
The colourful logo is based on an icon written by the late-Benedictine Sr Marie-Paul Farran, a member of the Our Lady of Calvary Congregation, who lived and worked at its monastery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
The logo was presented to the press at a Vatican news conference on 17th January, ahead of the newly established Sunday of the Word of God, which is being celebrated on 26th January this year.
The logo was presented to the press at a Vatican news conference on 17th January, ahead of the newly established Sunday of the Word of God, which is being celebrated on 26th January this year.
The logo shows the Resurrected Christ holding in his left hand a scroll, which is “the sacred Scripture that found its fulfilment in his person,” Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, told reporters.
By his side are two disciples: Clopas and his wife, Mary. They both fix their gaze on Christ while Clopas holds a stick to indicate “a pilgrimage,” the archbishop said.
Mary is holding one hand upward and with her other hand seems to be touching the Lord, reaffirming that he has fulfilled the ancient promises and is the living Word that must be proclaimed to the world, he said.
Holding the stick in one hand, Clopas’ free hand is pointing the road ahead, which all disciples are called to take in order to bring the Good News to everyone, Archbishop Fisichella said.
There is a star overhead symbolising evangelisation and the “permanent light” that guides their journey and shows them the way, he added.
It is also important, he said, to notice the feet of all three are depicted as being in motion, representing that the proclamation of the Risen Christ cannot be accomplished by “tired or lazy disciples” but only by those who are “dynamic” and ready to find new ways to speak so that sacred Scripture may become the living guide of the life of the church and its people.
AnaStpaul 