Aperuit illis

The phrase is Latin, meaning "He opened to them." It is the incipit, or opening words, of Luke 24:45, where Jesus, after his resurrection, "opened their minds to understand the scriptures." This biblical phrase lends its name to the papal decree.

Aperuit illis is an apostolic letter, by Pope Francis, issued "motu proprio" on September 30, 2019, the feast of Saint Jerome, instituting the annual observance of the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time as "Sunday of the Word of God", devoted to the celebration, study and dissemination of the Word of God. The first "Sunday of the Word of God" occurred on January 26, 2020. The Pope said that he wrote the Apostolic Letter in response to requests from around the world to celebrate the Sunday of the Word...

The phrase "Aperuit illis," drawn from the Gospel of Luke, speaks to a profound human yearning for comprehension, particularly in the realm of the sacred. It is not merely a title; it is an invocation of an event. Mircea Eliade, in his seminal work "The Myth of the Eternal Return," explored how archaic societies perceived time and events not as linear progressions but as moments of divine irruption, where the sacred actively intervenes in the mundane. The institution of the "Sunday of the Word of God" can be seen as an attempt within a modern religious framework to cultivate such moments of sacred encounter, to create a designated space where the ordinary rhythm of life is intentionally disrupted by the possibility of divine revelation.

This opening, this "opening of the mind," is a recurring motif across spiritual traditions. In Sufism, for instance, the concept of fath (opening) signifies a moment of spiritual insight or divine grace that breaks through the veils of ordinary perception. Idries Shah often described such openings not as intellectual achievements but as a sudden clarity, a recognition of truth that bypasses the discursive mind. Similarly, in Buddhist thought, the awakening of bodhi is an opening of consciousness to the true nature of reality, often facilitated by the teachings of the Buddha, which are themselves considered a form of divine opening. The Catholic Church, by designating a specific Sunday, seeks to encourage a communal and individual practice that mirrors this universal spiritual aspiration: the desire for the scriptures to cease being mere words on a page and to become living, transformative pronouncements that illuminate the inner landscape. It is a call to approach the text with a receptive spirit, anticipating not just information but an encounter that reorients one's very perception.

RELATED_TERMS: Illumination, Revelation, Gnosis, Bodhi, Fath, Divine Grace, Sacred Scripture, Spiritual Awakening