Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day.” On the liturgical calendar, we are now two weeks removed from our Lord’s baptism in the Jordan River, and one week removed from the occasion of His first public miracle at the wedding feast at Cana. As Jesus reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, announcing that the fulfillment of the prophecy – “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me” – is at hand, we ought to pause and consider what it means that Jesus had a custom of going to the synagogue on the sabbath. This custom is part of the fuller context of His public preaching and ministry, as well as an important element of His recapitulation of salvation history which we examined last week.

It is the custom, the habit, the weekly activity of Jesus to go to the synagogue to worship and pray on the sabbath. In this way, we see our Lord fulfilling the divine precept to keep holy the sabbath. Throughout the Gospel, we will find Jesus explaining the true purpose of the sabbath to the scribes and Pharisees. This divinely-instituted day of rest gives God’s people the chance to pause their regular activities and rest in the presence of God. This rest is accompanied by worship, prayer, and listening to the word that God speaks through the Scriptures. The history of Israel is full of examples of God’s people faltering in their worship, ignoring the sabbath, or forgetting their need to rest in the Lord. The first reading today, from Nehemiah, recounts a moment when the people of Israel are challenged to renewal in their sabbath observance. That the sabbath observance is part of Jesus’ custom shows us that in His humanity, our Lord set the standard for entering into the sabbath that we ought to follow. Observing the sabbath by worshipping God and listening to His word needs to be part of our lives.

“He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day.” We often distinguish custom from habit, with custom being a shared, communal practice or behavior, while a habit is a more personal repeated behavior. But Luke describes participation in the worship at the synagogue as a custom of Jesus. That is, what is normally communal and shared is also personal for Jesus. Not only does our Lord join Himself to the worshipping community, He is personally, habitually invested in communion with His Father in heaven. We might approach Mass attendance as a matter of custom, which may feel like we are a degree or two removed from the practice: “my family has always gone to Mass and so I go” or “my community customarily has Mass at the following times…” Or we might go to Mass as a matter of habit, a personal practice that is near and dear to our hearts. In fact both are necessary. If you attend Mass because it is what your family has always done, or because you desire a sense of community, wonderful! You are sharing in the custom of assisting at Mass. Perhaps today is the day to begin thinking of your participation in Mass in a more personal way, such that it is a habit deeply rooted in your heart by which you contribute to the customary practice of this community.  If Mass attendance is a personal practice, but feels at all isolated from the other people with whom you worship, perhaps today can be a moment to recognize how vital your presence is to the life of the parish community. This weekend, let us see our observance of the sabbath as both a matter of personal habit and as a custom that extends beyond ourselves, that we might have greater union with the Lord.

Peace,

Fr. Sam