Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

EZRA

            I was born in a society where religion was central in an average child’s upbringing. We did not have many priests to say Masses in our churches. In our town we were part of about sixty-two churches under one pastor’s pastoral care. At best we would get a Mass once a year but at times we didn’t get at all. I remember a particular year when the pastor did not come to our town. The elders of the town mustered their courage and went to the Pastor to inquire about his neglect of our town. To the dismay of our elders, he said: ‘your town has no priest who hails from there, so don’t complain.’ When that message was relayed to us, though I was a boy (about 9 years old), it became one of my motivational factors to embrace the vocation to the priesthood.

            Even though churches were not blessed with availability of priests, God was at the centre of our lives. Almost all our activities were laced with religiosity. As an adult in my forties, I am seeing drastic changes. Priests are many and vocations to the priesthood are very encouraging but secularism is eclipsing the religiosity in us. A day may come that our situation may be compared to Israel of old, who forgot the ways of the Lord and his laws to the extent that when Ezra read it to them that day, the law was totally new to them. The inspired writer described the emotions of that day in graphic words. We are told that the people were visibly moved, threw themselves reverently to the ground, and wept, because they heard about so many things they had not been taught.

            I hope our society will not get to that “forgotten state” so that we may need another Ezra to come and remind us of the ways of the Lord. But I am terrified, because the way that society is moving we may arrive at that “forgotten state of life.” Do you know many young people today cannot recite some common prayers we knew when we were only 7 years old? Some young people in our tertiary Institutions cannot pray the Holy Rosary on their own. When they come for the sacrament of reconciliation they cannot pray the prayer of Act of Contrition. The situation we find ourselves is very worrying and something must be done before things get worse.

            I chose today’s topic “Ezra” because of one main reason. Let us use God’s house to preach God’s Word, instead of making it a tax office or a tax collector’s house. Some young people recently conducted an informal survey on the minutes spent in churches for God’s Word and the minutes spent for raising funds. They concluded their findings with a message that more time should be dedicated to preach God’s word and promote catechism in order for their faith to be enriched. Some may say that we need money to build churches and engage in one church project or the other. Yes, that is good but what is the value of a beautiful church building when it stands empty of God’s people. Or what is the value of a beautiful church building when the congregants lack the sense of the divine, it is better a theatre where an actor is in full display than a temple of sacrifice and prayer.

            Children of God will find authentic happiness when Christ’s Gospel takes the incarnative effect in their lives (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us). At the tail end of the first reading, did you feel the emotions of the people? The inspired writer tells us that they were encouraged to rejoice and were sent off to a festive banquet because they found great fulfillment in hearing God’s word from the lips of Ezra. A friend once told me: “Any time I go to church and I hear a priest fill my heart with God’s word, I go home always a happy person.” He went on to say, “if we are filled with God’s Word, the priest does not need to shout and beg for funds, because we will bring the cheques the following day to his office.”

            In today’s Gospel, Jesus was more than the Ezra of old when he stood in the synagogue in Nazareth. When he opened the scroll to proclaim to the people, we are told that all eyes in the synagogue was fixed on him. Was it a gaze of expectation of God’s Word or curiosity? Whatever their intentions were, Jesus made it clear to them that the Word of God was being fulfilled in their midst. Let us pray for all agents of evangelization that God will use them to propagate his word. Amen.