In Australia this year, Word of God Sunday is on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (2 February).
Word of God Sunday invites us to pay special attention to the Word of God that we hear in that Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word. When Pope Francis established this Sunday as a way of highlighting the Scriptures, he wanted us to realise that the Scriptures come out of the lives of people living their faith in God through history. So, Pope Francis says “Biblical faith is based on the living word, not a book”.
This word, when we listen carefully to it, open to its deeper meanings, is able to help us live our faith here and now, in turn. That is because, through the Holy Spirit who inspired the writers of the Scriptures, the word always speaks to us now. It is not just telling us ancient history: it speaks to our experience of living in faith, now. It speaks to us as a community gathered but also to each of us individually.
This year on Word of God Sunday we hear the readings chosen for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. The first words we hear, from the prophet Malachi, set us up to receive a message from God. “See,” the prophet says, speaking for God, “I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.”
When the prophet Malachi wrote these words, he envisaged the God of Israel coming to the temple in Jerusalem to encounter the people directly. At that time, the prophet envisaged God coming to sort out things that were wrong among the people of Israel, so that the temple offerings the people made would be truly acceptable to God.
Imagine if God were suddenly to appear in your eucharistic gathering on this Sunday! Imagine the shock of God’s immense presence abruptly occupying your gathering space! What a disruption it would cause, over-turning all our ordinary Sunday behaviours. Imagine the sense of God, as intense as fire that can melt silver, gathering your community to Godself as one body of people yet connecting directly, deeply, personally with each person. This is what Malachi’s word, speaking to us now, invites us to envisage. Imagine it; sit in the experience, soaking it in.
And then ask yourself “who is the messenger that God has sent to prepare the way for God to come to me?” For each of us the answer will be unique. It might be a child who spoke an innocent truth that shook me. It might be a stranger who was kind just out of generosity. It might be an awful shock or loss that woke me up to what really matters in life. It might be an unexpected joy that has lifted me up so that I want to tell everybody about it.
Above all, as Christians, we believe it is Jesus who is the messenger of God, about whom we hear in the readings from Hebrews and the Gospel. What both these readings insist on is that Jesus lived our life, here in this world, from babyhood, through regular human growth, and then serious adult suffering, death and resurrection. This makes our human life, and my own individual life, matter.
Imagine living till next Sunday in that sense of God so present you could almost smell God, God who conveys to you that you utterly matter. Praise God!
Michele A. Connolly rsj