Monday of week 1 in Ordinary Time Hebrews 1:1-6 | Psalm 96(97):1-2,6-7,9 | Mark 1:14-20
in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is. (Hebrews 1:2)
When I read that portion of today’s reading, my mind immediately leaped to the Nicene Creed, specifically:
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.
A wise priest once told me that “we may know by heart every word of the Creed that we profess, but we’ll never really understand it.” Those six words in bold used to be almost a throwaway line. Now, I’m reminded of the beginning of the Gospel according to St. John:
In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. (John 1:1-3)
Christ, the Logos, the Word of God, born of the Father before all ages. Through Him were created you, and me, and everything we see around us.
I’m moved to exclaim, in punny hip hop lingo, “word up!”
The Baptism of the Lord Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11 | Psalm 103(104):1-4,24-25,27-30 | Titus 2:11-14,3:4-7 | Luke 3:15-16,21-22
He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewe. (Isaiah 40:11)
It’s easy for most of us to forget the circumstances of our own baptism, and especially the expectations laid on our tiny infant shoulders to be part of “the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus Christ has made acceptable to God, […] living stones making a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2:5)
A large part of our common priesthood involves offering ourselves in service to others as a shepherd would: giving food and drink to the hungry and thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, comforting the sick and imprisoned. (Matthew 25:35-36) Through our actions, we bear witness to others of the love of God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
So let’s be more mindful of our daily deeds, and seek to shape them in the mold of God’s unconditional love, so that we may become good shepherds in the likeness of the Good Shepherd, fulfilling our baptismal promises by bringing all peoples from the darkness of secular concerns to the Light of the Almighty.
Saturday after Epiphany Sunday 1 John 5:14-21 | Psalm 149:1-6,9 | John 3:22-30
‘The bride is only for the bridegroom; and yet the bridegroom’s friend, who stands there and listens, is glad when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. This same joy I feel, and now it is complete. He must grow greater, I must grow smaller. (John 3:29-30)
I have a long-term client for my consultancy, and I’ve been helping his development team on various projects for over a decade now, helping develop new products and figuring out how to solve particularly knotty problems. That I performed near-miracles on a regular basis probably helped his sales greatly, when his customers assumed I was his development lead.
So he was startled and rather upset a couple of years back, when I renewed my business agreement with him…and restricted my future involvement to an advisory capacity.
I then explained to him why I chose this path, and I still occasionally have to remind him when he wants me to code up a thing or two:
I’ve been helping you build your team for years; they’ve long since been able to support themselves. They don’t need a Superman swooping in to save the day; that just punctures their confidence in their own abilities.
It’s true that I can out-code and out-think most of your team, but they need a wise old Yoda more than a hotshot Luke Skywalker, pointing the way and providing reality checks instead of cutting through every problem like a lightsaber through butter.
And besides, I’ll have to move on soon enough. I don’t intend to do the same thing forever.
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I imagine something similar went through the mind of St. John the Baptist in today’s Gospel, when his disciples shared their concerns about this upstart teacher who was blessed by his baptism, but was now “stealing” his flock. He had to remind them that he was not the Christ, only tasked to pave the way for Him. Instead of being upset at having his thunder stolen by another, he was resolved to proclaim Jesus as Lord and master, even at the cost of “losing face” with his own disciples.
He also knew full well that he was not the “bridegroom” to be wed to the Church of God that is us all, but he could still take pleasure at meeting his Saviour, and witness the beginnings of His ministry on earth. The joy of completing an assigned task to the fullest is something most of us have experienced, and St. John the Baptist must’ve been doubly joyful in the knowledge that he was doing his tiny part to save all mankind…
Before his head moved on, forcibly separated from his shoulders by King Herod Antipas.
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We too can know such complete joy, by growing the name of Jesus while effacing ourselves. When our focus is on spreading the Good News, every light of truth gleaming in another’s eyes is another spark of satisfaction in ours, every heart turned to Christ beats in harmony with our own.
So let’s keep cracking on, for Jesus awaits everyone. As St. John the Baptist might have sung, were he musically inclined:
Here is your God, coming with your vindication.
Look and behold the saving power of God!
Friday after Epiphany Sunday 1 John 5:5-13 | Psalm 147:12-15,19-20 | Luke 5:12-16
His reputation continued to grow, and large crowds would gather to hear him and to have their sickness cured, but he would always go off to some place where he could be alone and pray. (Luke 5:15-16)
As I type this, there’s a group of young folks sitting in a pavilion under my study window, noisily chatting and occasionally laughing uproariously, in the dead of night. This happens quite often around my area, and while it can get annoying at times, I’ve learned to tune it out as I contemplate the next day’s scripture and write this blog.
It’s these moments that I’ve come to treasure again, the silent contemplation of the Word of God, detached from the noise of the secular world, from all its distractions and temptations.
Buy it does require an act of will to begin the process each night, to tell myself “OK, enough of the world, time to focus on the Divine”. Much like Jesus, I need to consciously withdraw to a place of mental silence, where Truth can voice its quiet thoughts.
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So it is too with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, dreaded by many who fear the memory of sins committed and omitted, and the guilt that floods our hearts in the silence on holy ground.
Yet it can instead be a time of renewal, to acknowledge that we are flawed but still loved by our Creator, to recount the times we’ve stumbled in order to take stock and ponder how best to stop falling over the same obstacles in future.
So let us embrace the need for holy silence in our lives, far from the madding crowd of noisy hedonism and seductive bedlam. Let us use that quiet time to draw closer to God, to reflect on our sins and resolve to do better.
And in that silence, may we make peace with ourselves, that we may better love the One who loves us beyond all telling.
Thursday after Epiphany Sunday 1 John 4:19-5:4 | Psalm 71(72):1-2,14-15,17 | Luke 4:14-22
Anyone who says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen. (1 John 4:20)
I learned a new word yesterday: epicaricacy, synonymous with the slightly more familiar German word Schadenfreude. Both mean “taking joy in the misfortune of others”, something that all of us have done at one time or another, and which I briefly mentioned in yesterday’s entry.
It’s easy to feel secret pleasure at someone else’s comeuppance, particularly to someone we dislike. It’s a bitter pill to swallow when a better person points out this particularly un-Christian trait in us, and we usually take umbrage. “Who are you to criticize me? You’re a sinner too, OK?!?!”
Yet epicaricacy is an insidious evil, precisely because it seems so right. All those people zipping around at terrifying speeds on e-scooters are “accidents waiting to happen”, so when we see one being stopped by a couple of enforcement officers, it matters not why the stop occurred. All that goes through our minds is “very good, he deserves it, throw the bloody a**hole in jail!”
Not a very loving attitude towards a brother we can see, is it? Especially not towards the folks rushing to deliver orders to customers before their burgers cool into soggy messes, making minimum wage in the process.
Remember the phrase “hate the sin, love the sinner” from our younger days? We may detest the things that some folks do, but unless we know they’re intrinsically evil beings, why treat them like spawn of Satan?
So the next time we see someone being questioned by lawful authority, let’s pray that their encounter will cause them to adjust whatever unpleasant behaviour we believe they indulge in, and quietly throw a little love their way.
Rather than a mental “FU” bomb.
Lord, it’s so easy to sit in judgement of others, and so hard to remember that You alone are the true Judge. Help us judge less and love more. Amen.