3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time-Cycle C
Neh 8: 2-4a. 5-6, 8-10; 1Cor 12: 12-30; Lk 1: 1-4; 4: 14-21
January 23/24, 2016

Can you imagine what it would be like if we all knew God existed, but we had no way of knowing what to do with him, how to live with him, how to connect with him, or what he wanted of us? Can you imagine, in other words, we as a people having lost all the Scriptures, not  knowing them, and having lost all understanding and connections with each other, with the Church. This was in many ways what had happened to the Israelites in our first reading today.

In our first reading, we have to understand the context of what had
 happened to the Israelites. They had had a lot of really difficult things happen to them, including having lost all copies of the law of Moses (or so they thought). None of them had ever seen or heard it for over a generation. They knew it had existed, because their ancestors had told them. They knew God existed because they had passed down by word of mouth all that God had done for the Hebrew people, how he had freed them from slavery, parted the water in the Red Sea, how God had fed their forefathers with manna and quail, how God had provided water from a rock, and how God had revealed himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai. They knew God existed because of all that, but they didn't know anymore how to be in a good relationship with God because the law of Moses was lost to them. They didn't know how to live with God and each other in the way God wanted them to live. But, one day a priest, Ezra, found a copy of the law of Moses behind a wall in the temple building that was being remodeled. This was the scroll that we hear of today in the reading. The people, all of them from the greatest to the least, were called together to hear aloud this law so they would know once more how God wanted them to live with him and with each other. And the people, we are told, rejoiced.

Then in our Gospel today, we hear how Jesus breaks open the Scriptures and reveals to the people what they had not understood about God's law, about how they were to live with God and each other. Jesus declared that the law was fulfilled in him. He was the way we were to live with God and each other. Jesus was the guidebook, you might say, the new law revealed to us that shows us how to live.

Finally, in our second reading, we hear that beautiful reading from St. Paul describing the Body of Christ, the Church. We hear that the Church is the mystical presence of Jesus living and true through which we learn how to live and love God and each other, and how inseparable Jesus is from his Church, and how important all of us are in God's plan.

My friends,  we are not just individuals in search of meaning. No, we are a people on a pilgrimage as a community, as a Church,  toward the Truth who is God, and our destination is heaven. We are Jesus' mystical Body, the Church, and Jesus in the Church shows us the way to live with God and each other. This is so important for us to remember as Catholics: we are a Church, and the community of the Church is the way to heaven. 
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Some people say that the Church has too many laws. Actually, it has very few hard and fast ones. The Church has a lot of two things though: Mercy and Freedom! Yes, mercy and freedom, because the Truth always set us free from sin and death, and the truth is God is alive, and that God is a God of freedom. We see this throughout the Scriptures, how God frees his people from sin and Satan and bondage and tyranny of all sorts. We only need to follow him and he shows us the way in his Son Jesus, and his Son Jesus remains in the Church, and without the Church, without Jesus, we lose our way.

Jesus promised us that his law would never be forgotten or lost, because he would be present in his Church until the end of time. He promised also that he would send the Holy Spirit into the Church, into our hearts, and he would write his law there. He promised that we would never be in the same situation that the Israelites were in in our first reading. He promised  that everyone, from the greatest to the least, would be a member of this Church, his Body, that everyone was 
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important, that no one was to be left out, that all would be included, if 
they would only be willing to listen to his law living in his Church and follow that law of love and freedom as a member of his Body. He also promised that he would send out his followers to bring back all who wander away. Jesus showed us that in the Old Law God seemed distant, but  in the New Law God is near, very near, within us, even in those who seem insignificant. That is why the Church is so pro-life, because God loves the addict, the unborn, the elderly, the disabled, and so must we. We must not ignore them.

Indeed, Jesus lives in, and is, in a certain sense, the Church. If we walk away from the Church, we risk walking away from Jesus himself. Do we really ever want to do that? I think not. We risk walking away from Jesus. Why? Because Jesus lives  in the person next to you today. He lives in me, and you, and you. He lives in the person in the pew ahead and behind you. He lives in the unborn child, in the elderly, the terminally ill, the immigrant, the disabled, the mentally ill, the addicted. Jesus lives
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in his Church, the People of God, and that is why we are pro-life and we preach the dignity of every human person, without exception! We must not walk away from God or each other, or devalue our lives!  If we fail to live rightly with God and each other, we will be eternally unhappy.

We are in this together, as the Church. There is another way of saying that: We are in this with Jesus Christ! 

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