LET US LIVE AS CHILDREN OF GOD, BRINGING PEACE AMONG PEOPEL

NEW YEAR: 1^ST OF JANUARY: Gal 4:4-7

The Catholic Church starts the New Year with Mary, the mother of the Lord, so that we may learn from her to live in faith and to accept God’s will and God’s plans for us.

In the company of Mary, we learn to be children, having Jesus as our elder brother. Mary, being full of the Holy Spirit, who enabled her to be fully committed to be a servant of the Lord, will help us to be formed in the image of Christ and to be one with him, thus becoming with him children of God.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul reminds us that God carried out his plan of salvation, at “the appointed time”, by sending his Son, who was “born of a woman”, in order to “enable us to be adopted us sons”.

As we begin a new year, let us rejoice and give thanks for this great gift of love: “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father” (Gal 4:4-7). We are not slaves, but children, and with Christ we are heirs of God’s Kingdom.

We end the year of 2013 with the reality of war in several parts of the world. There is civil war in Syria, causing endless destruction and countless refugees; and there is civil war in South Sudan, the newest country and one of the poorest in the world. Governments do not have money for schools, hospitals or even enough food for the population, but they have plenty of money for weapons that bring death, transforming their countries into cemeteries.

In the Catholic Church, the first day of the year is a day of prayer for peace. Jesus said: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Mt 5:9). If we are indeed children of God, then we must work for peace and establish peace in our society. Then, people will not live anymore in fear, and all will live as free children of God.

May God fill you with blessings and grace in the New Year of 2014.

JESUS, A REFUGEE IN FOREIGN LAND

29 DECEMBER: THE HOLY FAMILY

Although celebrating the Holy Family, this Sunday's gospel moves around the figure of Joseph and his role as guardian of the family.

Joseph put his live at the service of Jesus

He was a man of silence. No words of him are reported. He is always in the background, except when some difficult action has to be taken; then he comes in the forefront, doing whatever expected of him. He was a faithful servant, always ready to suffer inconvenience for the ones he loved. Mary and her needs took precedence over his own interests. And his life was totally at the service of Jesus. In fact, it is Jesus alone who gave meaning to his life, because according to the wisdom of the world is life was simply a wasted life.

They became refugees in Egypt

When we speak of the Holy Family, we main think of a family without problems, where everything was perfect and where all needs were satisfied. The Gospel of Matthew presents a very different picture. In order to protect his wife and and the baby Jesus, they had to run away to Egypt, in a hurry, in the middle of the night, because the tyrant Herod, afraid of is own shadow, was ready to kill the child as he had killed his own sons, afraid of loosing his grip on power.

Jesus' family went through the experience of thousands, in fact millions, of families who become refugees, running away from war, tyranny, oppression and starvation. Egypt, although being equated with the land of oppression, was in fact many times a land of refuge, where many people would find protection and abode.

The plight of the refugees

As we remember Jesus as a refugee in a foreign land, waiting for the best opportunity to god back to his homeland, we must remember the thousands of refugees who are running away from their own homes in order to escape the killings of war. In Syria, South Sudan and many other places...there are millions, suffering from the fight for power and the control of the wealth which should be shared by all. It is as the proverb says: When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.

Jesus went through the experience of his people

Jesus was a refugee in Egypt, as the people of Israel had been in ages past. As the Messiah, who comes to establish a new Covenant and liberate God’s people, Jesus goes through the experience of the people of Israel, that is through the human experience of suffering and rejection in order to transform it into a source of salvation.

THE MYSTERY OF INCARNATION

25 DECEMBER: CHRISTMAS: Jn 1:1-5,9-14

Crib at Limbwata, Chililabombwe, Zambia

The mystery of Jesus Christ

Chapter 1 of the Gospel of John expresses well the mystery of Incarnation, which is the mystery of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God who chose to share with us our humanity to enable us to share his divinity. This is the mystery that we celebrate at Christmas.

Our deepest desire is to become gods

Since the beginning, starting with Adam and Eve, human beings always strived to become gods. And so deep a desire is much more than an impossible dream; it is part of what we are, carrying in us the image of God. However, in the pursuit of this goal, we have gone astray, by trying to be gods outside God and against God. That is the great sin, called original sin, because it is the source of all other sins. Being created, how can we ever reach perfection on our own? Being given life, how can we become the owners of life? In spite of that, each one of us, being Adam and Eve, behaves in the same way, claiming the right to life and to lordship over all. By doing that, we abandon the right path, moving further and further away from the fulfilment of our deepest desire, transforming it more and more into an impossible dream. How can we become gods by rejecting the image of the living God in us?

The Word became flesh

The Son of God - the Word or the Speaking out of God - "became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." (Jn 1:14). By doing that, he restores humanity to itself, becoming again a true image of God. Being one with Jesus Christ, we become gods; not any more false gods set up on the emptiness of our own selves, but true gods, being one  with God in Jesus Christ.

"To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (Jn 1:12-13).

By sheer grace

On this great mystery, St Augustine wrote: 

"For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?

Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace."

JOSEPH, A MAN OF HONOUR

IV SUNDAY OF ADVENT: Mt 1:18-24

The Gospel is about Jesus Christ

Paul initiates his letter to the Romans by presenting himself as an apostle called and sent by God to proclaim the good news (the Gospel). And he makes it clear that he was commissioned to announce the news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who took human nature, being as such a descendant of David (Ro 1:1-3).

This is the great mystery that we celebrate at Christmas, which we call the mystery of Incarnation, which means that the Son of God came to live among us in a body like ours. Remaining the Son of God, he decided to hide his glory and assume human nature to be truly “God-with-us".

Joseph’s role in the incarnation

This Sunday's gospel deals with the role of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, engaged to Mary, in this mystery of Incarnation.

Some people would like to know much more about Joseph and even complain that we don't give him enough consideration in the Church. In fact, we can find very little in the Gospels about Joseph, but the Gospels were not written to satisfy our curiosity; they are proclamations of Jesus as the Son of God, Christ and Saviour. Similarly, we are told also very little about Mary, because we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not the gospel of Joseph or Mary. However, if we read attentively, we can find in the little that is written plenty to help us to be true disciples of Jesus Christ.

Joseph was confronted with the mystery of Incarnation. It is as if he is forced in by the circumstances; but we should not forget that circumstances are part of God's plan. He was engaged to Mary, when he discovered that Mary was pregnant. Faced with that, he could not understand even less accept the situation; puzzled, he looked for a way out. 

Even though unable to understand, Joseph cared about Mary’s dignity

In his Gospel, Matthew speaks of two attitudes that define Joseph's character: he was "a man of honour" (or a "righteous man"), and he wanted "to spare her publicity" (or he was unwilling "to put her to shame"). Being a man of honour, he could not accept Mary, when her pregnancy was not his; but he loved and respected her too much, and could not find the courage to denounce her and bring shame upon her. So he decided to abandon her, knowing that his decision would bring reproach and derision upon him, because everybody would point fingers at him and accuse him of being irresponsible. Instead of bringing shame upon Mary, he preferred to be shamed himself by the gossip of the people.

Joseph acted in good conscience and with a pure heart; and God intervened, because he straightens the path of the righteous and comforts the heart of the troubled. God revealed to Joseph the mystery of Mary's pregnancy: "the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit"(Mt 1:20), and orders him to play his role as protector of Mary and of the  child to be born. And Joseph did it, silently and in the background. In the end, Jesus' words apply to him: "‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!" (Lk 17:10).

JOHN’S QUESTION: IS JESUS THE PROMISED ONE?

III SUNDAY OF ADVENT: Mt 11:2-11

John the Baptist is more than a prophet

After a long time of silence, without a prophetic voice to guide the people in the ways of the Lord, John the Baptist came. He came as a prophet, bold and courageous like all the prophets of old, powerful in words and deeds. However, Jesus would tell the crowd that John was "much more than a prophet", because he was the messenger sent to prepare the way of the Messiah, in such a way that "among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist" (Mt 11:9-11).

John was great by his role as the forerunner of the Messiah, and he was great by his faithfulness up to the end. He remained always true to himself, because he was steadfastly loyal to his call and his mission. In the wilderness, he became a free man, who could not be tossed around like a reed shaken by the wind. He had put himself totally at the service of the Lord, and nothing else could influence him or turn him away from his duty.

John’s question to Jesus

Being presented as more than a prophet, we may think of him as superman, but he was not so. In prison, waiting for execution, he experienced what most saints experience, the dark night of the soul, where hope and faith seem to be fallacies. Then, only love goes on giving a reason to trust; and John sent his disciples to ask Jesus: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" (Mt 11:3).

John's question has been the question of so many, which goes on being repeated: Are you the one, or should we look for someone else? When we pass through moments of darkness in our lives, this same question invades our hearts: Are we not mistaken? Have we pursued but a dream? It seems as if we have lost Him or as if He is hiding from us. And we cannot rest until we find him again. And like John, we must ask others to help us find Him who gives rest and life to our souls (Song of songs, 5:8).

Jesus came with mercy and love

The answer of Jesus was reassuring: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me" (Mt 11:4-6).

Jesus came to bring forth God's merciful love that give life and salvation.  In him, God's promise made by Isaiah comes true: 

"Be strong, do not fear!

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you.”

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy" (Is 35:4-6).

A TIME OF RECONCILIATION, JUSTICE AND PEACE

II SUNDAY OF ADVENT: Isaiah 11:1-10

Paul wrote to the Romans that "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." (Ro 15:4)

God's word is always a light in our path, filling our hearts with hope and guiding our feet in the ways of love, justice and peace.

The Scriptures are the bearers of a promise of life, liberation and salvation. As we read through its pages, our hearts are illumined and warmed by God's fire of love, bringing a certainty of life and salvation. In a world in despair, walking through darkness, the Scriptures set out a torch of hope, showing God walking along with us and carrying us through the darkness and sufferings of this world to the light and rest of his kingdom.

Isaiah presents in a poetic form God's promise, which is fruit of his plan of salvation:

"The wolf lives with the lamb, 

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them." (Is 11:6).

There will be reconciliation and peace, harmony and communion. Jealousy, envy and hatred will not dominate the hearts of people anymore. There will be no more injustice, oppression and destruction. God's kingdom will be established and God's glory will shine all over the universe.

At the same time, the word of God is like a sword or, as Isaiah puts it, God "shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth" (Is 11:4).  And we see that very clearly in the boldness and the courage with which John the Baptist challenged both the religious and political leaders of his time?

The word of God denounces our evil plans and evil actions and challenges us to reform and convert. If we refuse to listen and to mend our ways, then the word of God will stand against us in judgement.

We may never take God for granted. He is a merciful God, but his mercy goes hand in hand with with his justice:

"Righteousness shall be 

the belt of his waist,

and faithfulness 

the belt of his loins." (Is 11:5). 

We must realize that we can never bribe God:

"He shall not judge 

by what his eyes see,

or decide disputes 

by what his ears hear,

but with righteousness 

he shall judge the poor, 

and decide with equity 

for the meek of the earth" (Is 11:3-4)

The only way to reach to God's heart is by being merciful and by a daily efort to live in love. When we live by love, we are manifesting God's glory here on earth.