“What is there about his word?”
September 3rd, 2009 by Br. Peter Martyr Joseph Yungwirth, O.P.
Recently ordained Fr. Jonah Pollock, O.P. preached a homily on Wednesday that was fitting both for a new priest and for the Year for Priests. Please feel free to read the text below and to keep our recently ordained priests in your prayers in this Year for Priests.
“WHAT IS THERE ABOUT HIS WORD?”
“What is there about his word?” This is the awe-struck response of the people in the synagogue in Capernaum to Jesus’ authoritative teaching and, even more, to his powerful rebuke of the unclean demon. The evangelist Luke reports that “they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority and that they were all amazed … for with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out. What is there about his word” that he can speak the truth as though he were its author and powerfully rebuke evil spirits as though he were there master?
Of course, all human words have the power to affirm and communicate the truth. And this is indeed a God-like power – a particular mark of God’s image and likeness that is stamped upon the souls of human beings. As human beings, we share in God’s power to know truth, to conceive of truths in our minds, to signify reality in language, and to communicate its significance in our words. In our words, we are able to affirm and communicate the truth about the world around us. In our words, we share in the God’s power to signify reality and to communicate its significance.
The power of God’s word, however, if far greater than this. Our words affirm the reality we perceive. God’s word creates the realities it affirms. Our words signify. God’s word effects what it signifies. And so when God said, “Let there be light,” there was light.
Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. He is, as we say addressing the Father in the preface for this Mass, the Word through whom you made the universe, the savior you sent to redeem up. Jesus is the Word God spoke at the creation of the world. And, having come in the flesh, he continues to speak God’s creative and re-creative word. The same word that brought being out of nothing and light out of darkness now, from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, brings health out of sickness, life out of death, order out of chaos, and the kingdom of God out of the stronghold of Satan. This word of God that Jesus speaks effects what it signifies. Jesus said to the demon, “Come out of him” and he came out, he said to the storm, “Be still” and it was stilled, he took bread and said to his disciples, “This is my body which will be given up for you” and it was his body, which he gave up for them and for us the following day.
Jesus also said, “Do this in memory of me.” In the same moment that, by the power of his word, he gave us himself in the Eucharist, Jesus also gave us his word. That is, he gave God’s word, the Word of God that had become incarnate in his person, the creative, effective word that sounded from his lips, to his Church, so that the word of God might continue to sound from the lips of men. Jesus has given his word to his Church and it is still creative and it is still effective.
As members of that Church, we are called first and foremost to be hearers and doers of the word of God that Jesus is and that Jesus speaks. But we are also called to be speakers of that word, in different ways according to our different vocations. This is a call that has a particular resonance to those of us who have made profession in the Order of Preachers. But perhaps you will forgive this young priest for focusing on the ways in which Jesus Christ places his powerful, creative, and effective words on the lips of those who have been ordained to act in his person as head of the Church. In my short experience as a priest, it has not ceased to astonish and amaze me that when I say to a penitent, “I absolve you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” he is absolved, and when I say over bread and wine, “This is my body; This is my blood” it is indeed the body and blood of Christ.”
It can be easy for us, due to our familiarity with such words, to lose our sense of astonishment at the power and effectiveness of the word of God that Jesus Christ continues to speak in our midst. But, at least at this Mass, let us try to recover the astonishment and amazement that so forcefully struck Jesus first listeners. And, as we approach our Lord in the Eucharist this evening, let us ask ourselves the question they asked: “What is there about his word?”
