Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 17, 2021: Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will...

Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will… 

What transformation is the Lord operating in you today? 

    The transformation the Lord works on Samuel is extraordinary. The young man has been raised since the age of three by the high priest Eli, and all he knows of God, he knows because he grows up in the presence of God, with the Ark of the Covenant, in the temple. But Samuel’s first personal encounter with God is transformative: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening, Samuel says to the Lord. Samuel’s open reception and willingness to listen will cause him to play a special role in salvation history; as he grows up, the Lord is with him, not permitting any word of his to be without effect, and Samuel will henceforth speak the Lord’s truth. One could say that God puts a new song into Samuel’s mouth. Psalm 40 tells us that when the Lord does something in our life that he hasn’t done before, we can’t sing using the old words – we need new ones that describe how we now understand the Lord’s transformative role in our life. When the Lord’s words are written upon us, we can’t escape them; they are an indelible sign of that transformation that occurs when we open our ears, and our hearts, to the Lord. 

  When two disciples – most likely Andrew and John – meet Jesus in John’s Gospel, they will follow him without question. Andrew tells his brother Simon Peter, We have found the Messiah, the Anointed One, a reason for hope. Jesus will operate a transformation in Peter by giving him a new name, Cephas; the name is a sign of a radical change in who Peter is and how he will come to understand himself. For Jesus’ call is precisely that: a call to change who we are, a call to radical transformation in which we are open to his Word written upon our lives. We thus, as Paul reminds the Corinthians, become members of Christ, members, that is, of the Body of Christ, and we must participate in full awareness that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within us. That identity – our identity in Christ, indelible, written upon our flesh – is what we celebrate in Eucharist, our connection to the greater Body, radically transformed by the call, and the will, of the Lord. 

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