It was a great surprise for me to hear on Monday that Pope Francis, with his apostolic exhortation, announced we are going to have a special Sunday for the Word of God after I preached on Sunday about the importance of reading the Holy Scripture daily. To help the church grow in love and faithful witness to God, Pope Francis has declared the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be dedicated to the Word of God. It’s sweeter that he chose the Feast of St. Jerome who said “the ignorance of Bible is the ignorance of Christ” to make this announcement which was released by the Vatican on September 30th, the Feast of St. Jerome, patron saint of biblical scholars. Salvation, faith, unity and mercy all depend on knowing Christ and sacred Scripture, he said in a new document.
Devoting a special day “to the celebration, study and dissemination of the word of God” will help the church “experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world,” the Pope said. The declaration to have a “Sunday of the Word of God” was made in a new document, given “motu proprio,” meaning, on the Pope’s own initiative. Its title, “Aperuit Illis,” is based on a verse from the Gospel of St. Luke, “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” “The relationship between the risen Lord, the community of believers and sacred Scripture is essential to our identity as Christians,” the Pope said in the apostolic letter.
“The Bible is the book of the Lord’s people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division toward unity” as well as come to understand God’s love and become inspired to share it with others, he added. Without the Lord who opens people’s minds to his word, it is impossible to understand the Scriptures in depth, yet “without the Scriptures, the events of the mission of Jesus and of his church in this world would remain incomprehensible,” he wrote.
With this apostolic letter, the Pope, “invites us to hold the word of God in our hands every day as much as possible so that it becomes our prayer and a greater part of one’s lived experience”, he said. Pope Francis said in the letter, “A day devoted to the Bible should not be seen as a yearly event but rather a year long event, for we urgently need to grow in our knowledge and love of the Scriptures and of the risen Lord, who continues to speak his word and to break bread in the community of believers.”
I am sure you all know what the word “anorexia” means. It means, lack or loss of appetite for food (as a medical condition) or an emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat. I think there is “spiritual anorexia” going around in our time. People are having no hunger or thirst for spiritual things. We Catholics have anorexia to the Word of God. There is a lack of interest and desire to learn and read the scripture. We need to cultivate in ourselves a hunger and thirst for the Word of God.
Pope Francis wrote, “We need to develop a closer relationship with sacred Scripture; otherwise, our hearts will remain cold and our eyes shut, struck as we are by so many forms of blindness. Sacred Scripture and the sacraments are inseparable. Jesus speaks to everyone with his Word in Sacred Scripture, and if people ‘hear his voice and open the doors of our minds and hearts, then he will enter our lives and remain ever with us’”.
Pope Francis urged priests to be extra attentive to creating a homily throughout the year that ‘speaks from the heart’ and really helps people understand Scripture ‘through simple and suitable’ language. “The homily is a pastoral opportunity that should not be wasted. For many of our faithful, in fact, this is the only opportunity they have to grasp the beauty of God’s word and to see it applied to their daily lives,” he wrote. I do believe that I put a good effort to preach to you the Word of God every week. I apologize to you for my limitation of language and my bad accent.
Please take time every day to read and listen to the scriptures that will give us the wisdom to deal with the day and help us to reach heaven. I remind you again of what St. Jerome said, “I interpret as I should, following the command of Christ: ‘Search the Scriptures,’ and ‘Seek and you shall find.’” For if, as Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of God, then “ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” St. Jerome.