The only Son, God, who is at the bosom of the Father, has revealed him (Jn. 1:18)

All the people, standing before Ezra in an open place, listened attentively on that holy day.  This decisive Sabbath, in Nazareth, all in the synagogue paid attention.

In the open place, it was the book of the law that attracted attention, and not the reader.  In the synagogue, on the other hand, all eyes are on Jesus.  He is not like Ezra, a minister of the word simply.  Jesus is himself the Scripture, the perfect fulfillment of the law and the prophets:  “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  More than a mere eyewitness, Jesus is really the only one who knows the Father and reveals him to whomever he wills to do so (Mt. 11:27).  Jesus, then, is duly lifted up and ought to be the focus of the people.

I get absorbed, however, along with some Christians, in persons and things that, though religious, make me lose sight of Jesus.  I enthrone, not infrequently, lifeless idols, rather than the living Jesus who speaks and challenges me in the gospels, and invites me to eat of the bread that is his body and to drink of the cup of his blood.

I am fascinated, for example, by precise and correct doctrines.  I am captivated by solemn ceremonies, by silken vestments, by chalices, monstrances and tabernacles made of gold, by luxuriously decorated altars.  I am mesmerized by proclamations and hymns in a strange language; the more unintelligible what is being said or sung, the more it sounds to me to be a mysterious and magical spell, and therefore, divine.  I no longer appreciate the importance of an assembly similar to the one Ezra called, made up of people who could understand and to whom he read plainly and gave such explanation so that all could understand the reading. In my triumphalist way of thinking, Christian worship cannot in any way be inferior to either the solemn worship in the magnificent Jerusalem temple or the secret cult in the pagan temples of Greco-Roman antiquity.  Without doubt, I have mistaken what is essential, Jesus, for the accidentals that come with the inculturation that the Incarnation requires.

Consequently, I forget Jesus, simple and poor, as well as the religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father.  This forgetfulness gives rise to favoritism, to divisive class-consciousness, and to the authoritarianism that Jesus forbids.

I need to listen attentively to Jesus of the gospels, so that I may value simplicity that, according to St. Vincent the Paul, is synonymous with the Gospel (Coste IX, 602), and honor the body of Christ in the poor (St John Chrysostom, Homily 50, 3-4, on the Gospel of Matthew).  The return to the living source and openness to the Spirit, who does not divide but makes of the baptized one body with many members, will help me both to be really attentive to Jesus and to see to it that he is integrated into my society, my culture, my present, with him being the center of everything.