26th of January

Today with the Universal Church, we will celebrate the Sunday of the Word, a Sunday entirely dedicated to the Word of God. Catechumens who ask for faith and baptism are given the Bible, so that they may discover God, recognize the history of salvation and have faith. St. John said, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God?"  Little boy Samuel learned to pray, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening." " (1Sam 3, 9).  "Say just one word and my servant will be healed. " (Mt 8:8). The Word of God not only gives us life individually, but also gathers us around it and makes us one people. In our diversity we are unified as God's people.

We give thanks to the Lord for his wonders, especially for the gift of faith. It is baptism that has opened to us the door of faith, the source of our hope. The Church provides us with the necessary tools to nourish our faith. First of all, the Word of God found in the Sacred Scriptures. We are invited to read, reread and contemplate them.  By listing the Sacred Scriptures, we discover divine revelation, in a perfect way in Jesus Christ, especially in his Word and in his deeds, more intensely in the PERSON. It is Jesus Himself who helps us to discover the Word of God. Luke in his Gospel makes it clear to us, "Then he opened their understanding to the understanding of the WRITINGS" (Lk 24:45). The disciples of Emmaus will leave in haste that very night for Jerusalem and testify to the other disciples. The Word transforms the person, and they will no longer be the same.

The second tool is salvation history and tradition, including the teachings of the universal Church. Divine intervention is faithfully told in history and tradition helps us to understand them and the teachings give us the system and explanations necessary to apply them. It is here that we learn that the joys and sorrows of Israel are ours.

In the New Testament call, we participate in the Apostles' call and through our baptism we respond positively to it. We can no longer separate ourselves from this history, for today it makes us live and we make it live, and may the new generation discover the divine works that will guide them to eternity, as they guide us today. 

For this, God needs us. Each one of us is invited to follow Jesus faithfully and to make this faith live fully. This fidelity obliges us to surrender ourselves to the divine will, and to let go of certain habits even if they are good and make others (new way of living) as our own.  We become aware that we are chosen, consecrated and sent so that the Kingdom of God may come to the people.

Like Jesus, we must announce this conversion, which is the first step towards salvation. The conversion that Jesus announced was not simply changing our lives, or losing it, but rather finding the life lost, going home, our own home. In this way we can re-appropriate the identity we have lost because of our sins. Thus, we will become the true light of the world and salt of the earth, as Jesus has asked to us to be. May the Lord bless us and brings to its completion, what He has initiated in us.  

Amen.