3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Jesus made quite an impression there in the synagogue. And we know that “all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth” [Lk 4:22]. But their amazement may not have been because of how he spoke. It’s perhaps more because of what he said; in particular, when he said, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled....”
Whenever prophecies are fulfilled, people perk up and pay attention. Partly because people have been waiting for a prophecy to be fulfilled, and partly because the fulfillment of a prophecy gives a certain amount of authority to whatever it is that fulfilled the prophecy; there’s a strong connection made between the past and present that gives the present authority and credibility.
So Jesus spoke with authority and credibility because he was the fulfillment of what people were waiting for. He made what the prophets said come true, and he fulfilled the law of Moses to a T. Jesus was authoritative, credible, and he was thereby beautiful and compelling.
And what’s going on here is what we’d probably call “continuity:” continuity between what the prophets had said and how their prophecies were fulfilled; continuity between the past and present; continuity of faith and fundamental values. Continuity is very important to God, and it’s important to us as a people faith.
For instance, our faith wasn’t invented yesterday. It didn’t come into being with the Second Vatican Council. It wasn’t born at the Council of Trent. It didn’t come into being at any point in the long history of the Church. It came into being “in the beginning,” when those first disciples encountered the living God in Jesus. And a big part of what gives the community of faith any credibility and authority is its connection to its beginning, to its source.
When Saint Luke wrote his gospel, it was in the later 1st Century—after two or three generations of Christians were already on the scene. And he wrote his gospel as a way to show how the church at that time was an extension of the work of Jesus and the Apostles. Luke wrote his gospel to help legitimize the early Church in the eyes of others. And he did that by applying this idea of “continuity,” pointing out that Jesus formed his community of disciples and sent them out to preach to the world, and—look!—here is the Church fulfilling what Jesus had set in motion.
Continuity gives credibility and authority. And, really, this is how we judge Church leaders today; it’s how we evaluate people (and ourselves) who are called “Christians.” We look at them (and us) and we ask: Is this person a fulfillment of what Jesus was all about? Is there continuity between Jesus and...this bishop, or priest, or deacon, or lay minister who claims to be a servant of the Lord? And we do that because we know, almost instinctually, that continuity gives credibility and authority.
Of course, this is why scandal in the Church is so damaging. It destroys the credibility of the Church (and even the credibility and authority of Christ himself) because then all people focus on is hypocrisy. They see the Church acting in ways contrary to the good, the true, and the beautiful, and they say: “Why should I believe them? They don’t practice what they preach.” In short, there’s been a rupture between who they are and what they profess their foundation to be: they’re professing to be Christians, but they’re not acting like Christ. And that lack of continuity destroys (or, at least, it cripples) any credibility it might have.
And the Church has gotten off track many times in its history. It’s continuity with Christ and the teachings of the Apostles hasn’t always been stellar. But it’s because of that that we have saints like...Anthony of the Desert, and Francis of Assisi, and Clare.
Saint Anthony saw that the Church was getting too bound up with the political structures and practices of the day. And so, he ventured off into the desert to get “grounded” again; to reclaim the “foundation” of the faith. He was searching for continuity with Jesus himself and the way of the Apostles. And he’s widely recognized as the founder of Western monasticism.
With Saint Francis of Assisi, he heard the call of God to “rebuild my Church, which has fallen into ruin.” In the 1200s, there was a lot of disarray in the Church: power struggles, struggles for wealth and land, the selling of Church offices, and the like. And when Francis answered God’s call, he didn’t try to decipher the present, and he didn’t try to envision the future. Instead, he looked back—not to his own past, but to the foundation of the Church.
Francis rebuilt the Church from its foundations up. He recaptured continuity with Christ himself and the life of the early Church; a life of community, self-giving, poverty, charity, faith, and hope. And, of course, among his first followers was our patroness, Saint Clare. She wanted to live a more “authentic” Christian life, and so where did she turn but to the beginnings of the Church.
And we see this with all the saints. They were, and are, in a constant search for continuity with Christ and his Apostles. They wanted their lives to be a fulfillment of what Jesus was talking about. And, because of that, we revere them as credible, authoritative witnesses to the truth of the gospel. And we can certainly learn from their example, and from this idea of “continuity.”
I imagine many of us have probably felt, at some point in life, that our life has “gotten off track.” And we might wonder: “How did I get here?” and, more importantly, “How can I get back ‘on track’?” And the answer seems to be this idea of continuity.
We look back at our lives and we see interests and passions we used to have. We remember old dreams and visions we had for ourselves—and they’re probably from childhood or maybe adolescence. And then life happens and those things sort of fade away, maybe eventually, we feel that “somewhere I got off track.”
And we have three choices. We can either just stay in the present and hope that somehow life will change. Or we can try to forge ahead and create a new life. Or we can look back to the basics of who we are. We can look back to our origins, back to a time when we had a sense of direction or purpose. And we can do that—not to “recapture the past,” but to get firm again on the foundations of who we are, and then build again from that.
And, really, it’s just making the choice to have continuity in life: continuity between who I was, who I am, and who I will be; continuity between my past, my present, and my future. And that gives not only credibility and authenticity to whom we are; it also gives integrity to who we are as individuals.
And we can apply this idea to so many instances. One is the state of our country. It’s fair to say that our country is losing its way. You know, when it becomes the law that a pregnancy can be aborted up to the ninth month, we’ve lost our way. When politics become such that party affiliation is more important than doing what’s right and just, we’ve lost our way. And what can we do, but to go back to the founding. What are our basic governing principles? What are the basic values regarding personhood, and life, freedom, and happiness that are enshrined in our founding documents?
Again, it’s not a return to the past (because the past wasn’t perfect). It’s a return to the promise and the vision laid out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, in the Declaration of Independence, and in the Federalist Papers. How do we go forward? By going back.
The same is for the Church, and for our families, and our society. Whenever life gets off track (which is just another way of saying that life has “ruptured”), we go forward by considering the past—not just any past, but the foundations of whatever it is we’re talking about. We take those foundations—and everything good and true that’s been built on those foundations, and we rebuild.
That was the task of Nehemiah (the first reading): to rebuild society after the people returned from Babylon. And that rebuilding happened (successfully) by making sure there was continuity between the present and the past. It’s why they clung to the Law of Moses. It’s why they rebuild the Temple. Those things were foundational to who the Jewish people were (and are).
So, continuity is important to us. It keeps us grounded in the truth of who we are as individuals, as a Church, as a nation. And it gives us credibility and authority in the ways of Christ today. May we stay true to Christ, our foundation, and live truly good and beautiful lives, inspiring others, as Christ inspires us.
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