How does the Word of God speak?  In what way or ways do we hear the Word of God speaking to us?  Is God’s word a silent word, silent though still speaking?  What happens if we separate out silence from the word?  Do silence and the Word belong together?  Clearly, they do.

There is no Christianity without love and forgiveness!  There is no true Christian love that does not include mercy and forgiveness.  In the gospel parable of the so called ‘Prodigal Son’, Jesus reveals the nature of God as unconditional love and compassion.  And this revelation is what he incarnated in his life, death, and resurrection…He continues to incarnate this love now, within our hearts as they are converted, meaning changed, to being opened wider than wide!

“Without communion there is no mission”…Communion communicates mission….“Communion is the substance of mission”.  What are these words of Dom Mauro Giuseppe saying to us?  Is not the core of our mission as monastics communion, communion of heart and mind with God and one another?  There is a creative tension between the ‘I’ that has said ‘yes’ to God and this same ‘I’ that surrenders in the process of creating a ‘we’, a communion of persons who together are giving their lives to God and to building up a world where God’s love always has the final word.

The first reading from Sirach for today’s liturgy says: “The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind” (24:6). Our speech, our words are revelatory.  Do not our words show the care of heart and soul that they have had?  Our words reveal how silent or quiet we are inside.  Interior silence brings wisdom, compassion, mercy, even fruitfulness to our words.  Behind the words we utter we get a sense of ourselves, our true selves.  And this self is in process, always growing, a self that is always being converted to becoming more Christ-like in demeanor and in action.

For the readings of this Third Sunday, it is striking that two great voices and thinkers converge around one word: ‘today’. Those voices are Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope Francis.  Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in his commentary on the readings for the Eucharist compares the ‘today’ of the first reading with the ‘today’ spoken by Jesus in the gospel.  Ezra’s proclamation in the Old Testament reading is uplifting.  He says to the people who are weeping as they receive the word of God: ‘Today is holy to the Lord your God….Today is holy to our Lord.  Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength’ (Nehemiah 8:10).  Jesus’ proclamation that the ‘Spirit of the Lord is upon me’, and ‘Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing’ (Luke 4:18, 21) creates consternation among many of his listeners.  They wonder ‘who is this’, and the words Jesus speaks “seem blasphemous and…incomprehensible to his listeners” (Light of the Word, p.272).  With this text from the Epistle: “All have been given to drink of the one Spirit” (1 Co 12:13),