Thursday, February 15, 2018

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 18, 2018: He remained in the desert for forty days...

Where is the chaos in your life? 

   In truth, chaos can take many forms.  In the story of the patriarch Noah in the Book of Genesis, God’s decision to allow the waters of the flood to ravish the earth becomes a moment of primordial chaos for Noah and his family; God, who was victorious over the waters at the time of Creation, seems to turn his back on all of his creatures in the great deluge.  In the end, however, God’s promise to Noah is clear:  there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.  God sets his bow – a rainbow – in the clouds as a guarantee, to remind God of the covenant he has made between himself and all living beings.  Thus, in Psalm 25, the psalmist can sing that your compassion, O Lord, and your love are from old… Here, chaos manifests in the form of human sin, and the psalmist must beg the Lord to teach him God’s paths and show sinners the way.  Humankind can be victorious over chaos only through the grace of God.

   Even Jesus, fully human, encounters chaos, first and foremost in the desert, where the Spirit drives him for forty days in Mark's Gospel.  There, Jesus will be among wild beasts and perhaps experience the very human fears associated with them, so that he might know intimately the human struggle to open to the fullness of God.  But when Jesus emerges from the desert, he is ready to put an end to the chaos:  This is the time of fulfillment, he says  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Unlike the flood, meant to destroy all, Jesus came to save all, as the First Letter of Peter states:  Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.  Jesus suffered once for all the sins that would ever be committed, for all the sin conceivable in humankind.  His death and resurrection offer an eternal end to the chaos of human existence, and salvific hope for all peoples.  In the final analysis, humankind is victorious over chaos only through the grace of God.  We have but to open to that saving grace.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source:  www.wordle.net


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