The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 23, 2022

I’m doing better, as of even moment, Saturday afternoon.  Fewer coughing fits and my appetite is returning.  Thanks for your prayers!  

Luke 1:1–4; 4:14–21

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: 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. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is taken from two distinct portions of the Gospel according to St. Luke.  The first portions consists of the first four verses of the Gospel which constitute a preface to the Gospel itself.  The second portion, which I have separated from the first, is taken from that fourth chapter of that Gospel.  Maybe the people who reformed the lectionary in the 1960’s under the aegis of Vatican II thought that as the preface introduces the Gospel, so the verses in chapter four introduce the preaching of Christ.  At any rate, the preface is very interesting because here we have the Evangelist speaking directly to his readers — the original readers being Greek Christian converts like himself, probably living in and around Antioch in Syria.  Writing between the years 50 and 60 A.D., he may have known of St. Matthew’s Gospel produced ten to fifteen years earlier, though at the time existing only in its original Hebrew form.  Meanwhile, St. Mark was writing his Gospel in Rome.  St. John’s Gospel is usually thought to have been written last of all, but judging from internal evidence it could not have been written much later than Luke’s.  All this to say that if a Greek Christian residing in Syria or Asia Minor between the years 35 and 50-60 A.D. had wanted to read about the life of Jesus Christ, he would have been out of luck.  The Apostles who had seen and heard Christ preached mainly to their fellow Jews, as we see from the Acts of the Apostles and from their Letters.  Men such as Barnabas who preached mainly to their fellow Gentiles had not seen or heard Christ themselves.  They might know something of his life — especially about his Passion, Death, and Resurrection — but their preaching emphasized the meaning of what the Lord did and not it’s details.  We see this in Paul’s Letters to Gentile converts living in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome.  

Mark and Luke saw the need for a written account of the Savior’s life for the Gentiles who had not seen him with their own eyes, as John would say he and those reading his Gospel had seen the Lord.  And while Mark’s Gospel comes across a bit as dictation taken down — a student frantically trying to write down every word his teacher is saying — Luke has looked at and considered some written sources that already existed, and benefits from talking to many men and women who knew the Lord, including his Mother.  That Luke uses sources and testimony is easily seen in his Greek, which is often written with a heavy Hebrew accent, so to speak.  He tells us in his preface that “many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us.”  St. Jerome speculated on what these narratives were and concluded that they no longer existed in his day.  But neither did they gain acceptance as Scripture in the Apostolic Church in their own time.  Probably these narratives were notes on the final days of the Lord, lists of his appearances after the Resurrection, notes on his teachings, and lists of his miracles.  Perhaps the words of Jesus that have come down to us from outside the Gospels are from such documents.  The best known of these is quoted by St. Paul in Acts 20, 35: “The Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  Others are found scattered in the works of the early Fathers.

Luke emphasizes the importance of “those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us.”  From the Letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles we know that Luke had plenty of opportunity to get to know those who knew Jesus.  He must have known Peter, given the details that he provides about him in the first chapters of the Acts, which he also wrote.  He also gives the names of people with whom the Lord interacted which were not known by the other Evangelists telling of the same event, indicating that he must have known them.

Also important for Luke was giving an orderly account, that is, one with a solid chronology as its framework.  This was much more important for a Greek than for a Jew, who saw chronology as a secondary concern.  And so Luke says, “we too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you.”  We see this, for instance, in his placing the visit of the angel to Zechariah the Priest before the visit of the angel to the Virgin Mary, even though the latter is more important and could have been placed first for that reason.

Through his conscientious attention to the early sources, the eyewitnesses, and to chronology we are assured of the accuracy of what Luke is able to relate “so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.”  As St. Peter writes, “For we have not by following artificial fables made known to you the power and presence of our Lord Christ: but we are eyewitnesses of his greatness” (1 Peter 1, 16).