Celebrate the Jubilee: Homily for Sunday, Janaury 26, 2025

In today’s gospel, Jesus reads the passage from Isaiah that describes the Jubilee Year. But Jesus puts a most important spin on it. This is not the ordinary Jubilee Year, but rather the visible appearance of the Messiah. Readings for Today

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Celebrate the Jubilee

Your words, Lord, are spirit and life. Just a short while ago, we sang these words, which came from St. John’s Gospel, where Jesus said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” But what does it mean to say that these words of God or the words of Jesus are spirit and life?

Sometimes, when we consider words from the Bible that might be familiar to us, we can recognize them, but because they have become familiar to us, not really think about what we are hearing or saying. When we consider the words of Jesus, which are spirit and life, what exactly do we mean?

As is usually the case, the readings today help us to flesh out what these words mean. In the first reading, we encounter Ezra, who was a Levitical priest and a scribe, which meant he was committed to studying the Torah. He lived in a time where the Jewish people were living in exile in Babylon.

What we encounter in today’s reading is Ezra and the Jewish people after their return to Judah, the southern kingdom where Jerusalem would be located. But there is something more important to recognize about what we read. The people who had been in exile were removed from the Jewish law, the Torah, in two ways.

First, from a faith perspective, their failure to observe the law was seen as a sign of their failure to observe the law was seen as the reason for the exile. Second, because they were in exile, they were unfamiliar with the law.

Now, the exile lasted about 60 years, and so the people far from Jerusalem lost contact with the law. Upon their return to Jerusalem, Ezra, who had been a student of the Torah, even in exile, reminded the people with the Torah. What we encounter today is his reading of the entire Torah.

This experience was overwhelming for the people, many of whom began to weep when they heard the life they had missed out on. And yet, they are reminded that these words represent God’s beautiful gift to the people about how to live a fulfilling life.

It might be helpful to recall the words of Deuteronomy, where the people, through Moses, were told to choose either death or life. And choosing life meant committing to live by the words of the Torah. And the same choice is presented to the people through Ezra. And the people, who are now able to understand the words of the Torah because of the explanations of Ezra, are now offered the life of fulfillment that God intended.

In this sense, then, we can see how the words of the Torah could be life. And we can see how the words of God are not only life, but more represent a life in the Spirit. In this way, the words of God are both Spirit and life. Both Spirit and life are important, because not only must we understand the words, but we must commit to living out the words in our life with the grace of the Holy Spirit.

The second reading we heard today deepens this understanding of living out the words of God in our own lives. Of course, every single human being is created as a unique and single example of the power of God’s love. Because of that, every single human being is created with unique ways they can live out the love of God.

Even though we are unique with gifts given to each of us individually, St. Paul reminds us in the second reading of the importance of recalling that all our gifts are given in a way that we form a community. We belong to each other. And individual experiences are the experiences of this community.

And so, when we share an individual success, it is the success of the entire community. When we suffer, it is suffering of the entire community. This, by the way, is the ideal of Dominican life. For us friars, the sacred preaching we engage in is not simply the work of a single friar, but comes forth in the lived experience of community, study, prayer.

Moreover, the fact that each of us has different gifts should not be read in the context of better or worse, but rather to recognize that the gifts of the community are never complete, both in the giving and in the living, unless we see them in the corporate sense of the body of Christ, of which each of us is a member.

This is countercultural. It is not secret that we tend to view gifts and talents we see in a hierarchical manner. Athletes and entertainers can earn an awful lot of money. Those who lead major corporations can become quite rich because of the compensation they receive.

But let’s consider a countercultural view. Let’s look at someone who might have the gift of generosity. Jesus highlights the person who gives a cup of water to one of the little ones, that is, the person who is not seen as important or significant. And yet, it is it not the case that these actions of generosity can be the means through which someone comes to believe in Jesus and be saved.

And what is more important than that? Isn’t the most important thing in life the positive difference we can make by living out our faith authentically? And if we wonder how this authentic gift of faith can be lived, today’s gospel helps us to understand.

Jesus reads this passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

While most certainly in the gospel story, this passage from Isaiah refers to the signs that will accompany the arrival of the Messiah, and so the hearers of Jesus would have understood that Jesus was making a dramatic claim, they are not just about that. These words are not a bad outline of how each of us should live.

Acknowledging the Spirit who dwells in each of us, bring the good news to the poor, providing liberty to captives whose lives do not seem free, proclaiming how Jesus can provide healing and brokenness, is something for all of us.

Pope Francis has declared a year of Jubilee. The focus is hope. This notion of a Jubilee comes to us from the Old Testament, where debts were forgiven, new beginnings were announced, having to serve one another in repayment of a debt came to an end.

We live in a world desperately in need of hope. And so, if nothing else, today’s readings challenge us to share the message of hope, and to make it authentic by the way in which we live our lives.

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