The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
One piece of advice I’ve learned from art appreciation classes is to pay attention to where the figures in a painting are looking as an interpretive key to the painting’s meaning. I couldn’t help but remember this advice while reading today’s passage from Nehemiah, where the prophet tells us: he opened the scroll that all the people might see it. Why does Nehemiah provide us with this detail?
The Israelites had just returned to their homeland from exile in Babylon. Now, for the first time after seventy years of practicing their faith furtively, they gathered to see the Law—the Law that God gave them as a sign that they were His beloved, covenanted people—publicly proclaimed and displayed in broad daylight. No wonder they weep! The Lord has set them free to worship Him without fear. This is cause for rejoicing indeed.
Just as Ezra read from a scroll to the gathered Israelites, Jesus reads from a scroll to the Jews gathered in the synagogue. There is, however, a telling difference. In the first reading, the people were looking at the scroll. In the Gospel, Luke tells us that the people were looking not at the scroll, but at Christ—not at the words of the Law, but at the Word of God Himself. In each case, the people’s eyes turned towards the source of their common identity: the Law gathered the Israelites into God’s people, while Christ gathers His Church into His own Body.
The imagery of today’s Psalm reveals what God does for a body that keeps its eyes fixed on Him: He gives it life, refreshes its soul, rejoices its heart, enlightens its eyes, inspires the words of its mouth and the movements of its heart. The Psalm presents a vision of a body that flourishes because it draws its life from the Lord.
In the second reading, however, St. Paul hints at what happens when the Body looks away from Christ: division creeps in. Unlike the exile forced upon the Israelites in Babylon, Paul warns us that sometimes our division isn’t forced upon us: we choose it—through pride, when we adopt an attitude of superiority or haughty independence; through shame, when we wallow in an unhealthy sense of our unworthiness; and through apathy, when we adopt an attitude of unconcern for others. These faults come from turning our gaze away from Christ and fixing them on ourselves.
We all face these temptations. But Paul says that none of these self-focused attitudes have a place in Christ’s Body. When we gaze at Christ, our pride is diluted when we remember that we are nothing without Him, our shame is removed when we recognize that He is the source of our worth, and our apathy dissolves as we realize that His self-sacrificial love for us impels us to love each other in turn.
Today’s readings challenge us: where are we looking? Are we looking at Christ with the same love and gratitude with which the Israelites looked upon the scroll of the Law? In looking at Him, do we recognize Him as the source of our life and being, and will we accept the freedom from exile He offers by allowing Him to gather us into His Body? Are we prepared to set aside the self-centered gaze of pride, shame, and apathy so that we can serve all the members of His Body in love? May His promise to give sight to our blindness be fulfilled in us today, and may our joy in gazing on Him be our Body’s strength.
Karen Celano lives with her husband and two children in the Boston area, where she serves as Director of Curriculum at St. Benedict Classical Academy. As an educator, she strives to help her students seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful and so to fulfill their vocations as sons and daughters of God and disciples of Jesus Christ. She finds her strength from Eucharistic adoration, praying the Divine Office, and spending time in nature reading the book of God’s creation.