Daily Reading
First Reading
Jeremiah 26:1-9
At the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, this word came from the Lord: Thus says the Lord: Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah that come to worship in the house of the Lord; speak to them all the words that I command you; do not hold back a word. It may be that they will listen, all of them, and will turn from their evil way, that I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on them because of their evil doings. You shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law that I have set before you, and to heed the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you urgently—though you have not heeded— then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.
The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord. And when Jeremiah had finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, “You shall die! Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” And all the people gathered around Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.
Psalm
Psalm 69:5, 8-10, 14
O God, you know my folly;
the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.
I have become a stranger to my kindred,
an alien to my mother’s children.
It is zeal for your house that has consumed me;
the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.
When I humbled my soul with fasting,
they insulted me for doing so.
rescue me
from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
Gospel Reading
Matthew 13:54-58
He came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.” And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.
Reflection
Friends, in today’s Gospel, on his return to Nazareth, the Lord identifies himself as a prophet. Jesus is not just one more in a long line of prophets but rather the personal and perfect embodiment of the transformative speech of God. As Pope Benedict XVI puts it in Verbum Domini, “Now the word is not simply audible; not only does it have a voice, now the word has a face, one which we can see: that of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Therefore, we are not surprised that the Gospels consistently portray Jesus’s words as irresistibly powerful. At the tomb of his friend, “he cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” and “the dead man came out.” Precisely because Jesus is the divine Word, what he says is. Origen of Alexandria said that just as all of Jesus’s acts were like words, so all his words were like acts.
The Church, which is Jesus’s mystical body, is the privileged bearer of his word to the world down through the ages until the Lord returns. This is why the Church continues to unleash transformative power.