3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025
Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-19 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 Luke 1:1-4, 14-21
This is Sunday of the Word of God. Pope Francis asks us to give prominence to the Word of Godin our liturgies. So, we pray that we will be open to hear the Word of God and that we will be bearers of the Word of God to our world.
The 2nd reading today is a continuation of last Sunday’s excerpt from St Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians. We together are Christ’s body but each is a different part, an essential part of it. We each have gifts and different roles to play. And, while the apostles and prophets and teachers may be singled out for important roles, all of us are called to be witnesses to the Word.
Saint Luke, the evangelist of this Liturgical Year, is put before us as a model. “I, in my turn, after carefully going over the whole story from the beginning, have decided to write an ordered account for you.”
Luke appears to us as the most down-to-earth of the evangelists. He is very real and seems to relate to most of us with his understanding of the human condition. Luke is known as the Portrait Painter among the evangelists. It is he who introduces and describes the important personalities involved with the coming of the infant Messiah.
Luke makes the characters of Mary, Elizabeth and Zachariah, John the Baptist, Simeon and Anna come alive for us, they are people with whom we can now identify, relate to.
Luke’s portrayal of Jesus is just the same. Jesus is the one who took on human flesh. Jesus becomes one like us. Jesus is one who understands us, has compassion for us, heals us and brings us new life. And so, after Luke introduces his gospel and deals with the birth and early life of Jesus, he witnesses to us about the character of Jesus as he wants us to know him. He wants us to see Jesus as the fulfilment of the prophets; the gift that is given to us – or rather, the five gifts (like the five golden rings of the 5th day of Christmas – which ‘my true love sent to me’!!);
1 The Good News brought to the poor;
2 Liberty to Captives;
3 Sight to the blind;
4 Freedom to the downtrodden;
5 the proclamation of the Time of the Lord.
This is Luke’s unique way of presenting his Gospel account. He uses the event in the Synagogue to show that he understands God’s plan of salvation and how that plan is borne into reality by the person of Jesus. Luke also knows how to dramatize an event in order to underline its importance: “He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them; ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen’”
Every time we hear it does it not echo with the same drama and wonder? ‘This text is being fulfilled even as you listen’.
We pray for the grace to bear witness to the Word as Saint Luke does