Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons 27 January 2013

(Third Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Ezra the priest reads the Law to the assembly of Israel in this Sundays first reading from Nehemiah, an action supported by others who helped the people to understand and accept the gift that the Law of God was for them and to place the reading of the law in the context of worship and praise, for as Ezra said, ‘the joy of the Lord is your stronghold’. This act, a covenant between God and the people continues on in the Assembly of the Church for worship, for each Sunday we listen to the New Law of Christ, summed up for us so succinctly in the words in the opening chapter of Luke, where Jesus gives us his mission to fulfill the words he reads from Isaiah.

In our liturgical assembly it is not Ezra the priest we hear, but the living presence of Christ the word made flesh proclaimed particularly in the Gospel and broken for us in the homily, here the Lord empowers us by the power of the Spirit to act in his name and to be transformed people. Paul reminds us of this when he uses the analogy of the human body to show how we can be people of difference and yet belong together in Christ. He points out that in the Church the gifts of the Spirit are used to build up this body so that we can be a people of mission and hope in the world.

We have just celebrated Unity Week and Peace Sunday, the 26th January was the great feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul in Damascus, a part of the world in dire need of our prayer and our help.

These three things, the desire of Christ that we may all be one, the striving for peace and our own conversion to the way of the Gospel are at the heart of the mandate Jesus gives to us.

In the vision of Isaiah and the image of the body in Paul we recognize that to accept that Christ Jesus Christ is to shake off zealotry and extreme religious behaviour as Paul did and to recognize that there is no distinction of persons in Christ, to turn his phrase around; each one of us is a different part of Christ’s body, but together we ARE Christ’s body. Let us rejoice in that good news!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.