3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – January 26, 2025

St. Paul – Lyons, KS

Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19:8-10, 15; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

Why doesn’t the Eucharist change me?

So, in today’s Gospel reading we have this very famous passage from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel and the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, there at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Today, Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth, to the synagogue, and in dramatic fashion he announces why he has come.

And what does he do? Well, he reads from the book of the prophet Isaiah, a section that is pretty much the “job description,” the “mission” of the one that God had promised would come; the mission of the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ. Just before this story, the Spirit came down upon Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan, right? (That was a few week ago.) There in the Jordan he was “anointed” by the Spirit. And in today’s Gospel, it picks up after that as Jesus returns to Nazareth “in the power of the Spirit.” And he tells the people, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Sweet! Isaiah’s prophesy is being fulfilled!

But what is the Spirit given to him to do? What is the Christ supposed to do? Well Isaiah makes it clear. “To bring glad tidings to the poor…to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” There is a fancy word we use to summarize all of that. Very churchy word. Do you know it? Salvation. (Yeah, you know it!) Salvation. Jesus, the Christ, is here to bring salvation. As Isaiah says, and as Jesus makes clear, he is going to go into all of those dark places of fallen humanity—right into the place of brokenness, and poverty, and blindness (human frailty), oppression, hurt, fear, all of it! Jesus is here to bring salvation.

And that word “salvation” comes from the Latin word salvus which means “health.” We get the world “salve” from it, the thing you put on a wound to help it heal. In other words, salvation is intimately bound up with the idea of health and healing. The “salvation” Jesus brings isn’t just a “get out of jail free card” from hell, no. He brings a healing, a healing that our human nature desperately needs. Sin, Original Sin, death, life—all of this and more has wrecked havoc on us. But the Messiah—the Christ, Jesus is here to finally heal all of that.

Like I mentioned last week, on February 9^th (so just a few weeks) we are going to begin our Spring series called “Renewing…” (“Rerouting…”, “Reconnecting…”, and now “Renewing…”). And “Renewing…” is going to be a deep dive into this theme of healing, the healing that Jesus brings, to experience his healing. And very, very simply—the secret to all of this (I’ll give it away today)—the secret to receiving this healing is quite simple: we have to encounter him. It is in the presence of Jesus, in an encounter with Jesus—that’s when things change. Remember last week: Jesus was at the wedding party, water into wine? If we want to receive his healing, we simply need to encounter him.

And so the simple question I want to ask today is this: “Ok, Father. Sure. I need to ‘encounter Jesus,’ be in his ‘presence.’ But look: I’m here every Sunday, he is here in the Eucharist, been coming my whole life—and nothing seems to change.” Or, you could ask it, “I’ve seen people coming to Mass and receiving the Eucharist—Jesus, body, blood, soul and divinity—for decades, and they are still real jerks.” The question is why? Why aren’t they different? Why doesn’t anything seem to have changed? If an encounter with Jesus supposedly changes things, why hasn’t it changed me?

Jesus and Moana

To answer that—so, how many of you have seen Moana? Disney movie, came out in 2016. Anyone? So I grew up with 5 sisters and I now have 8 nieces…which means? I’ve had to sit through my fair share of princess movies! The movie is about this girl, Moana, who is tasked with saving the world. Long story short, there is this mythic island creature, Te Fiti, who had her heart stolen—and so death and darkness begin to spread. And the hope—the hope is that someone will come, restore her heart, and save the day. And it’s Moana—Moana is chosen, she travels to face death and to restore the heart of Te Fiti.

Anyway, there’s a scene at the end where Moana is walking toward this horrific stone-lava-creature—who turns out to be Te Fiti, disfigured, and broken. Without her heart, Te Fiti has become this stony, broken, angry, dark creature. And Moana says—she sings, ahem… “I have crossed the horizon to find you, I know your name.”

But the whole time I was watching this, I was thinking, “They stole this story from Jesus!” We have Jesus, God—Jesus Christ who crosses the horizon of heaven and earth, crosses the horizon between eternity and time, journeys from the crib in Bethlehem all the way to the top of calvary—to find you, to find you, broken, in darkness, stony. And he says, “I know you. I know your name.” Not just, “I know y’all.” But, “I know you, your name.”

And then Moana says, she sings to this lava stone creature, “They’ve stolen the heart from inside you.” And again, I think, “How often throughout life—I see people who have had their hearts ripped out of them, who have had holes punched into their souls through trauma and abuse and neglect, and even just life. And in big ways and in little ways, all of us have experienced this; it’s just part of the condition of original sin; we can’t escape it. Satan, the world, and the flesh rip our hearts out of us. And we try to think of all these ways we can figure out. Ways not to feel the hurt and the pain and the suffering—we turn to sin; to being impatient, angry, resentful; numbing out with food or booz or Netflix or scrolling. That’s us; hearts stolen and wounded.

But then Moana sings, “They’ve stolen the heart from inside you. But this does not define you. This is not who you are.” And then she places the heart back into Te Fiti, healing her, restoring her—big transformation—renewing her, saving her. Our Lord, in the Eucharist, he journeys to the cross to give himself to us so totally and so absolutely that he says to us, “Here. Take my heart. Where yours is wounded, where holes have been punched, where yours has been stolen, in all the ways that you’ve been wounded, that you feel not good enough, unworthy, insecure”—the Eucharist is dynamic and it’s alive and Christ waits there and he says, “Take my heart. Here.”

(Didn’t think you could learn so much from Moana, huh?) But look: Jesus, here in the Eucharist, comes to us, offers his heart to us. Remember last Corpus Christi, I talked about the Eucharistic Miracles, those times when the Eucharist miraculously, physically changes, changes into flesh? What kind of flesh is it always? Heart tissue, the flesh from his heart. Jesus crosses the horizon of heaven and earth to find us. Why? To give us his heart. Why? To heal us, to restore us, to renew us—to save us.

Let Him Find You So You Can Find Healing

And so this is my simple plug today. During this whole “Renewing…” series, I want to encourage you to make a Holy Hour. You know how during Lent we do 40 for 40, Adoration is extended from Sunday afternoon all the way until Tuesday? Well we are going to begin it a few weeks early, just a few. So on February 16 we will begin perpetual adoration from Sunday at 3pm until Tuesday morning at 7am. Why?

Well this is my simple plug, my simple pitch: because in the Eucharist, Jesus is offering us his heart, he is offering us himself, he is waiting there to encounter us. And let’s be honest: in this relationship we have with Jesus, the number one thing we need to give him… is time. You make time for the people you love, people who are important. Make time for Jesus.

And so back to the question. This is the simple answer—I think—to why people can receive the Eucharist all the time, for decades, but they never change, they’re still jerks, still unchanged. Two things. I think it’s because we don’t give him the time, and because we haven’t truly opened our heart to him—we don’t recognize that he has been trying to give us his heart, heal us, renew us. During “Renewing…” we’re going to talk about opening our heart to him, allowing him in. But for today, I just want to ask you to make the first step: sign up for a Holy Hour, sign up for an hour a week. 

I want to close with this beautiful quote from Pope Francis. Pope Francis said this, “Only love can heal fear at its root and free us from the self-centeredness that imprisons us. And that is what Jesus does. He approaches us gently, in the disarming simplicity of the Host. He comes as Bread broken in order to break open the shells of our selfishness. He gives of himself in order to teach us that only by opening our hearts can we be set free from our interior barriers, from the paralysis of the heart” (Homily, June 14, 2020). In the Eucharist, Christ asks you to give your heart so that he might give you His in return. He draws you into the very life of the Blessed Trinity. The Lord wants to heal you and he comes to you; he’s journeyed to you from all eternity to meet you under the appearance of bread and wine, so that he can enter those places and spaces deep within you. And show you that he wants to console you, bring glad tidings, proclaim liberty, recovery, an end to oppression—salvation, healing. I hope—I hope throughout the course of this series, you’ll learn to be vulnerable, open your heart to him—so that he can give you his heart, and heal you.