Homilies

March 6, 2008
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Jeremiah Exodus 32:7-14; John 5:31-47
Fr. Justin Sheehan

If you want to know how to interpret a particular book, one good way is to ask the author about it, if you have any way of getting in touch with him. In this evening's Gospel, the Author of the greatest book ever written gives us a principle of interpretation, and unless we pay attention, we're going to miss the full meaning of the Bible. "lou search the scriptures", Jesus says, 'believing that in them you have eternal life; now these same scriptures testify to me".

Jesus is not talking about the New Testament, which hadn't been written yet. He's talking about the Hebrew scriptures, and he's saying the Old Testament testifies to him. And in case we miss the point, he goes on to say, "If you really believed Moses, you would believe me too, since it was I that he was writing about". This, is from the Gospel of St John, but St Luke makes the same point. In the passage about the travelers to Emmaus, he writes that "starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, Christ explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself". And later in the same chapter Jesus says, "Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the psalms, was destined to be fulfilled. He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures". Unless we too can see Christ in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, then we don't understand the full meaning of the scriptures, a meaning which was intended by their divine Author.

The early Christians were faithful to this teaching of Christ, beginning with St Paul. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote that our ancestors in the desert "drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ". In the fourth century St Jerome commented that you could put together a complete Gospel of Christ just by sticking to the prophet Isaiah. Both were expressing the common Christian conviction that Christ is yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, and that "all time belongs to him, and all the ages", from the beginning when the Word was with God, to the time when the Word became flesh, to the end when he will come to judge the world. There never was a time when Christ was not, and even before the Word of God took on human nature, he spoke in human language. The voice may be the voice of Moses, but the words are the words of Christ, full of grace and Christian truth, for those who have ears to hear.

In these days of Lent, let us listen for the voice of Christ in the first reading as well as in the Gospel, in the responsorial psalm as well as in the words of consecration. The Church has found no better way to prepare us for Easter than by assigning an Old Testament reading to every single Mass of Lent without exception. Let us ask Christ to open our minds to understand the scriptures, especially the passages throughout the Old Testament that are about himself. May our hearts burn within us as he explains the scriptures to us, and may we recognize our Lord at the breaking of bread.