Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 12, 2025: The grace of God has appeared, saving all...

The grace of God has appeared, saving all…
Do we trust in God’s promises? 

    God’s promise of salvation is ongoing and personal. The prophet Isaiah writes to a community in exile hoping for release of imminent relief from their bondage: speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her service is at an end; her guilt is expiated. The people of Israel can look forward with hope so long as they have confidence and faith in God and in God’s promise. In fact, God’s action in our world surpasses all we might hope for, from the beginning of time. Psalm 104 reminds us to bless the Lord for God’s care of all of his creation: They look to you to give them food in due time; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. Both Isaiah and the psalmist celebrate God’s ongoing care and concern for creation, and God’s constant efforts to renew the face of the earth. 

    Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to humankind; his coming releases us from our bondage to sin. In Luke’s Gospel, all are baptized, Jesus along with the rest, but the presence of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove is a revelation of all that Jesus is. All Jesus has done and will do is pleasing to God the Father: You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased, the voice from heaven intones. Like John the Baptist, we are not worthy to loosen the thongs of Jesus’ sandals, and yet he will sacrifice himself on our behalf. The grace of God has appeared, Paul tells Titus, saving all! God, whom we do not and cannot see, has been made manifest, revealed in the Incarnation. Our baptism is our entry into his passion, death and resurrection; we participate that we might be transformed, undergoing the bath of rebirth, that Christ might cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.

    If Isaiah’s prophecy brought comfort to a people who were troubled and living in fear, giving them confidence to persevere, the coming of Jesus should do the same for us. In baptism, we are transformed, that we might conform our lives to his. Grace saves us, training us to live as we ought. We are saved, if only we have faith in him and in the fulfillment of God’s promise to humankind in the person of Jesus Christ.

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

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 9, 2022: The grace of God has appeared, saving all...

The grace of God has appeared, saving all…

Are you living out your faith, at one with Christ?

   The people of Israel had a hard time holding onto their faith during their time of exile. But the prophet Isaiah has words of encouragement for them: Here comes with power the Lord God! Isaiah wants them to hold onto their faith, that they might speak comfort and hope to a city destroyed. The prophet reassures them that the Lord will do extraordinary things for them: every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low to facilitate their return home at the end of their captivity. They need to restore their own faith in the power of God at work in them, though they may not be where they think his power works. Psalm 104 reminds us that the Lord is great indeed; everything that happens, happens because of God’s will and care for his people. Though all God does may be beyond our comprehension, still, we hold to our faith, dependent on God’s mercy and generosity, always.

   In Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist similarly calls the people back from their wayward ways, offering them hope for a messiah: one mightier than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Like the people of Israel hundreds of years before, John’s community is called back to faith, and must restore their hope and trust in God who loves them, for the one who is sent is God’s beloved Son, who will himself be baptized, not because he needs a radical transformation of heart, as the people do, but because it offers him a connection to humankind, an entrance into our humanness that will allow him to take our sin to the cross with him. The Letter to Titus reminds us that Jesus gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness, and to cleanse for himself a people as his own. Our own baptism has made us one with Christ; through our faith, we are heirs, but we must ever maintain that faith, restoring it when necessary, and most importantly, living it, giving evidence of that faith to our world. The grace of God is at work in us; that is extraordinary. If we live with an awareness of that gift, we can live as one with Jesus, trusting in God’s promise and hoping that one day, he will bring us home as well.

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

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 10, 2021: All you who are thirsty, come to the water!

All you who are thirsty, come to the water! 

Do you thirst for relationship with the Lord? 

   When writers of the Old Testament want to talk about God’s love for God’s people, they commonly use language that refers to the ways their needs are met. All you who are thirsty, come to the water! Isaiah tells a desert people for whom food and water are often a struggle to acquire. But in fact, God is providing them with something they have not before realized in its fullness: God’s love for them and the infinite identity that love provides – the only requirement being that the people must thirst for God in order to open to God’s work in them. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation, the canticle from Isaiah proclaims, giving thanks to the Lord and acclaiming his name, in gratitude for that relationship to which he calls us, thanks to the everlasting covenant promised to David, and to us. 

   The eschatological banquet requires that we thirst for relationship with God; our identity comes from that shared relationship, for the relationship entails a shift in how we see ourselves and others. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus chooses to be baptized in the Jordan by John, freely accepting to be one with the people, entering into the fullness of our reality, that he might make us new. Jesus needs to be baptized if he is to embrace our humanity fully, for all time, that we might ultimately share in divine life with him. When John the Baptist shows up, the people are thirsting for this relationship; by entering into our lives, Jesus allows us to enter in turn, through baptism, into his life. Baptism is thus, for us, a participation in that relationship cemented when we accept Jesus Christ who, as 1 John tells us, came through water and blood, that we might become one with him and reveal his love to all. 

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

Image source: www.wordclouds.com