In an article by the Catholic News Agency, it was revealed that, “Pope Francis ... declared the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be the Sunday of the Word of God in order to promote a closer relationship with holy Scripture and its dissemination in the world. Pope Francis instituted the special day for celebrating the Word of God in the Church with the promulgation of the apostolic letter Aperuit Illis, published September 30, the 1,600th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death and his feast day. 

In Aperuit Illis, Pope Francis said Catholics should keep in mind God’s teaching in the Book of Revelation: that the Lord is standing at the door and knocking. “Christ Jesus is knocking at our door in the words of sacred Scripture. If we hear His voice and open the doors of our minds and hearts, then He will enter our lives and remain ever with us,” he said.

There is a definite need for us to come to know the Scriptures because sometimes we can look out into the world and see that many have forgotten our identity to our Creator. This allows for valuing some lives more than others as in abortion or racism where we fail to see the dignity of others.

Saint John Paul II fought against this. He knew that through knowledge of the Scriptures, God’s Word, we could remember our identity in Christ. In many of his teachings he had a favorite passage from the constitution on the Church in the Modern World of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (n. 22): “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from His Gospel, they overwhelm us.”

Let us allow our Lord to shine his light on us and find our way in Him and pray for all to do the same.