2nd.
Sunday of Year (A)
(Isaiah
49: 3, 5-6; 1st. Corinthians
1:1-3; John 1: 29-34
___________________________________________________________________________________
Our readings for today, dear People
of God, are presented as a kind of spiritual
sandwich! The first reading and the Gospel –
the bread and substance of the sandwich, so to speak -- give us wonderful
pictures of the Messiah as promised to Israel through the great prophet Isaiah;
and then as offered to Israel before being given to the Church as the Word of God, become flesh as Jesus Christ
born of the Virgin Mary of Nazareth, and prospective Saviour of mankind.
The first reading told us:
The Lord said to Me: You are My servant,
Israel (the Messiah pictured as the perfection
of Israel, the People of God), through whom I show My glory. The Lord has
spoken Who formed me as His servant from the womb … and I am made glorious in
the sight of the Lord, and my God is now my strength. It is too little, the Lord says, for you to
be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of
Israel, I will make you a light to the nations, that My Salvation may reach to
the ends of the earth.
And
in the Gospel we heard:
John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him and said: “Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon Him,
… He is the Son of God.
There we are told of the glory of Jesus
and of His work as messianic Saviour of the whole world.
Next, in between those two texts, the
meat, as it were sandwiched for our spiritual feeding today, where we are told how
Jesus, as Perfect Man-for-our-admiration-and-imitation, lived so as to become
our Saviour from sin:
Here am I, Lord; I come to do Your will. I waited for the Lord, and He put a new song
into My mouth, a hymn to our God. To do
Your will, O My God , is My delight, and Your law is written within My heart. I announced Your justice to the great
assembly.
And
then St. Paul himself – adding as a perfect condiment just for today -- specified
that example for our imitation:
You who have been sanctified in
Christ Jesus (are) called to be holy.
Dear
People of God, the meaning and significance of human creation as a whole, and of
our individual life-purpose therein, is a divine and most wonderful mystery and
yet, we must recognize that God’s supreme desire when sending His very own Son
to be for us the Word-made-Flesh, was
that:
His salvation may reach the ends
of the earth and take away the sins of the world;
and
therefore, though our own individual life-purpose is mysterious – that is, holy,
not blatant -- God’s salvation is nevertheless meant to
reach the ends of the earth, mankind as a whole, and therefore must be both understandable,
desirable and achievable, for those called.
Humankind
– alone of all creation -- was made in the likeness of God for communion with
God, and because God is all Holy and True, therefore, our communion with Him must
express P/personal love and enable us to share, somehow, in His eternal life. The sins of the world, OUR SINS, must be taken
away, ultimately by the Blood of the Lamb.
Holiness is the very essence of God’s being and that is why Saint Paul
told his converts:
You who have been sanctified in
Christ, (are) called to be holy,
That
is, God’s concern is both for the truth and integrity of present our being here
on earth and for the spiritual beauty and personal fulfilment we find in heaven.
Now,
all this may well, and indeed should, lead us His People to recognize that we can
only come to know God’s will and follow His grace more closely by imitating
more closely the examples of John and Our Lord Jesus Himself by trying to listen,
pray, and reverently wait -- perhaps for even a considerable time – upon God’s
great goodness before we can, humbly receive God’s blessing and enlightenment,
by His Spirit, and through His Church.
Therefore,
we can’t merely seek information from
the Scriptures, or admire mere logical
arguments in Mother Church’s dogmatic teaching. The historical, physical, actual, Jesus, was actually
seen by John the Baptist -- but that wasn’t enough for him to recognize
and believe in Him as Saviour; for that he
needed a special light, an elevating grace, from God. And we, in our turn today, need a similar special
light and grace that we might recognize, appreciate, and respond to God’s
Personal love for us -- you and me individually -- in Mother Church’s
Scriptures, and that we might partake fully of the divine-life-for-human-living
bestowed in total profusion in her Eucharist. for this we need to have the
example of our very own spiritual mother, who so sublimely appreciated Him she called ‘the Almighty’:
The Almighty has done marvels for
me, for HOLY IS HIS NAME.
Let me now, to close, draw up some of the characteristics of a Catholic Christian as learnt from today’s Gospel.
A
Catholic Christian seeks peace so as to be able to listen:
first of all, to his own being which
will tell him that nothing in this world can fully satisfy him;
secondly, to God, in order to find
hope, meaning, purpose, and fulfilment for his life as an individual human-being become a
child of God.
A
Catholic Christian is, has to be, fundamentally humble, because he knows and fully
accepts that he cannot even seek salvation, let alone embrace it in Jesus,
without the Gift of the Spirit and the
mercy of our heavenly Father. No one
must ever think that holiness can be got on the cheap by saying a few
prayers or giving to some charity occasionally.
Holiness has to become part of our life as lived faithfully, in the
community of the faithful, Catholic and Christian, before God, not before men. And yet, God knows our weakness both
spiritual (pride) and physical (lust), and therefore He looks for loving
obedience, sincerity of mind and heart, and perseverance through plentiful and
lean times. Failings He is always willing
and ready to forgive, but hypocrites and liars, the vengeful, and all despisers
of others He hates.
