The Message

To hear the Word of God is to hear it as a message from God straight to our hearts and in such a way that one is called to give over their entire life for the Word. To hear the Word of God without being touched in such a deep and personal way is to not hear it at all.

To have ears of faith that can experience the Word in this way is a gift from God. One does not work hard to hear things in the right way, God gives the ability to hear as He desires.?

Since this is given, and not the product of hard work, it is not a source of pride but a source of humility. A parable in St. Luke expresses this in saying, “‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ And St. Paul goes even further, “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”

And since it is a gift, it is not intended to be hoarded, but to be shared, but to be given away. It is impossible for others to know the Word of God if those who hear it do not share. St. Paul makes this very clear, “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

Those who have been given the gift of hearing the Word then are not only given understanding of the Word, but a Mission to go out and spread the Word. A Mission to help others hear, not as a set of interesting ideas, but as the Lord of the universe is calling them by name today.?

But the strange thing has always been who God chose to entrust with this Mission. In ancient Israel, the prophets are not only the most unexpected people to deliver a message but they are sent to deliver a most unexpected message.?

He picks these unexpected messengers not because there is anything special or superior about them, but precisely because there isn’t. He wants us to know that the messenger is nothing and the message is everything.?

By doing this He reveals the hearts of other men. Those who think much of themselves will reject the message from a messenger whom they deem themselves to be superior. And those who think much of God will rejoice even the more that God’s glory can be pronounced from such strange and unexpected places.

Jeremiah is called at age 16 and sent to tell the Israelites of an impending exile, how they should subject themselves to this exile, and allow God to humble them through it. Don’t have to think too hard to wonder how that message was received, especially from a young man in a society that highly valued elders and tradition!

Jeremiah himself does not want to take this call at first, but our Lord is a hounddog, “The Hound of Heaven” as Francis Thompson calls Him. And in hindsight, we marvel all the more that God could have spoken such wisdom through a man who one would never expect such things to be uttered. It provides a unique type of testament not to Jeremiah’s greatness, but God’s ability to use anyone as an instrument.

It is the same for the early Christians. Fishermen and tax collectors and tradesmen are selected to tell the Romans that their emperor, who they thought to be god, was not, but their Jewish teacher, who had been put to death by the empire, is. The Romans who valued military strength perhaps above all else were to worship a man crucified??

Oh, and they were also told they should radically and completely change their way of life in order to come follow this God-man: living communally, giving away all their possessions, sharing their belongings, caring for the poor and needy, and more.?

Implied in their call to change their lives in this way was an indictment on the Roman way of life. The Romans worshiped power, they ruled through fear, and the most important thing on an individual basis was glory. But Christianity revealed these to be inversions of reality.?

Power did not make one holy, but gave one the responsibility to take care of those who were truly blessed: the poor, the weak, the infirm. The binding together of the Christian communities was not through fear, but love. People who visited Christian communities, before hearing anything of what doctrines Christians had to teach, marveled at how much they loved one another.?

And lastly, while they did agree that glory held high importance, the way by which one came into glory was something totally different. Glory was not found in one’s accomplishments, but in one’s humility. Glory that belonged to the crucified God-man and those who picked up their own cross to follow Him.

Today, Christ is posing us with this question in our lives: what is most important to us? And if one does not feel convicted by this question, one does not have ears to hear.

We must remember how Christ too was a very unlikely person with a very unlikely message. But the difference with Christ is that in this case the messenger is the message.

We now recognize Christ with 2000 years of history influencing us, so we forget how radical it was for a young man to be telling all of his elders that what they have prioritized is totally wrong. And what they should prioritize over and above everything else is following Him.

You can see why so many would be tempted to say, “who does he think he is telling us what to do? We are good Jews (or good Romans)! We will not stand for this!”

You can also see how some would say, “this man is saying something totally different. It seems like what he says is true, but from where does he get this knowledge? And can it be possible that he actually lives his life like this? I must follow him and learn from him.”

But what I can’t understand is lukewarmness.?

You can see why Christ would go out to those who were outcasts in His time with His message. It was then and is now always hardest to preach to the people who already think they have everything all together.?

The outcasts did not have the affirmations of society deluding them into thinking that they would be just alright without Christ. They knew they needed salvation. They were open to receiving Him.?

But it is those who are good in the eyes of the world that are often most perplexed when someone approaches them with otherworldly logic. What do you mean I need a savior? I’m a good person! Society says so!

This explains Christ’s parable today. It explains that though we all would like to think we would accept the invitation to Christ’s banquet, we are receiving and rejecting it everyday.?

Christ is present every day in the Eucharist, but our Churches are not overflowing with people desperate to receive Him into their bodies and souls.?

Christ is present on every page of Scripture, yet for many the Holy Bible is either (at best) a piece of interesting literature among other pieces of interesting literature or (at worst) an old irrelevant book from which we need to move on in the name of “progress.”

Christ is present every time the Good News is proclaimed. Someone may proclaim the Gospel, but rather than feasting on it, we keep it at a distance. It is not relevant to us personally, but would make for a good subject of conversation later. Or these are simply interesting ideas alongside a series of other interesting ideas in the world.?

Christ shows the disciples that while everyone would like to say that God is most important to them, their behavior and most especially their interior life says otherwise.?

He shows that if we don’t see ourselves as poor before the Lord then we do not see the Lord at all. He shows us that Christ is everything to us or He is nothing to us.?

And people that received this Word into their hearts and took it seriously have shown us that a willingness to give one’s life for Christ is the measure by which we can determine how much one’s heart belongs to Him.?

There is a banquet and we are all invited. But rather than a dress-code, we’ve been given a heart-code. We can only attend if we arrive with humble and contrite hearts. Do we want to go?