Sunday Gospel Reflection, April 12, 2015: Jesus is the Christ...

Jesus is the Christ...

How do we give witness to what we believe?

Sunday’s gospel reading from John reminds us of the story of the disciple Thomas, who is not present when Jesus first visits the apostles, and whose doubt is manifest:  Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my fingers into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.  As it happens, Thomas has only to see the Lord one week later and his conversion is immediate:  My Lord and my God!  he exclaims.  God revealed before him elicits a profound statement of faith, and Jesus’ reflection on this moment is telling:  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.

After the first generation of disciples has passed, of course, this will be the situation of all those (including us) in the Church:  they will not see, yet they will believe.  In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, it is the great power of the witness of the apostles that helps them to strive for peaceful community, where everyone is of one heart and mind.  All is shared in a just distribution of goods; they had everything in common. In the words of Psalm 118, this is cause for rejoicing, the joyful shout of victory in the tents of the just, the tents of those who do God’s work.

Like the apostles, we are charged with a mission:  As the Father has sent me, so I send you, Jesus says. We are called, in other words, to give witness; it is part of our identity as baptized believers in Christ.  We are called to bring the love God has to bear for us upon the world, to transform it, giving witness to his love with our lives.  With the help of the Spirit – the one that testifies, according to the First Letter of John – we are called to plant ourselves squarely within the domain of God’s love, a position from which we can give open witness to our belief that Jesus is indeed the Christ, and to the ways our lives are transformed, daily, by faith in his love.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 11, 2015: The springs of salvation...

The springs of salvation...

At last, water everywhere!

On this Sunday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, it is perhaps not surprising that our readings are filled with water imagery:  water is richly symbolic in Biblical tradition, beginning with Genesis.  Potentially chaotic, water is also life-giving, and thus, in the Book of Isaiah, as a part of the eschatological banquet, the gift of water is one way God meets the needs of the people:  All you are thirsty, come to the water!  But is it just a question of quenching physical thirst?  Or do we thirst for more, thirst for relationship, thirst for God?  To participate in God’s final banquet, we need to do just that:  we must thirst for relationship so much that that relationship changes how we perceive ourselves, such that we define ourselves first in relation to God.  And the rain and snow that come down and water the earth – a powerful metaphor for God’s Word – is another form of God’s love, also sent to quench our thirst; it, too, is life-giving, the springs of salvation from which we will draw water joyfully, as in this week’s canticle from Isaiah.

Why, then, does Jesus come to be baptized?  He is, after all, already in relationship with God. But as the first letter of John reminds us, Jesus came through water and blood, moving through baptism to death. The waters of John the Baptist’s baptism are significant, then, because through them Jesus participates in relationship not just with God, but with humankind.  Through baptism, Jesus enters into the fullness of our reality, embracing humanity entirely, becoming one with all of humanity so that he might work for the salvation of all by taking our sins to the cross, dying and then rising.

Our own baptism is a sacramental participation in that relationship, our own dying and rising, and from it flows our relationship not only with God, but with each other.  The first letter of John reminds us that God’s love is made present through the community that results from obedient relationship with God:  we know that we love the children of God when we obey God and keep his commandments.  Likewise, baptism unites us as a people joined by covenant to God, so that we, like Jesus, might embrace our identity in Christ, becoming conduits of God’s liquid love for the world.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle.net