Sunday January 3rd. to Saturday January 9th.
Sunday January 3rd. to Saturday January 9th. Reflections on the Readings at Daily Mass.
Sunday January 3rd.
Second Sunday in Christmastime
Readings
Ecclesiasticus 24/1-2,
8-12 : Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 1/3-6,
15-18 : John 1/1-18
Today’s readings sum
up, as it were, all our understanding of the great event we have been
celebrating at Christmas with the great Prologue from John’s Gospel as their
climax.
The reading from
Ecclesiasticus or Sirach, as it is more usually known now since this was the
name of the author, is part of the magnificent poem in praise of Wisdom which
begins the fifth section of the Book. Wisdom is personified as the ‘one’ who
resides among ‘her own people’ that is the Israelites, the People of God, and
she speaks in ‘assembly of the Most High’,
that is among the host that surrounds God’s throne.
By God’s command she
‘pitches her tent’ among God’s people, and makes them her special dwelling
place. She exists from all eternity, is co-existent with God. She ‘ministered
before him(God) in the holy tabernacle’ that is, she is synonymous with the Law
giving the proper rules for the worship of God. She now dwells among God’s holy
people ‘in the beloved city’ that is Jerusalem, she has taken root ‘in a
privileged people’ the Jewish race which is ‘the Lord’s property’, ‘his
inheritance’. The author speaks of the Wisdom of God as a reality almost as
another way of God dwelling among his own people. She guides them, orders their
right worship and inhabits them as her own.
The great Prologue of
John’s Gospel which we read today obviously echoes these same ideas as we read
‘the Word was made flesh and lived among us’ or as it may be translated in
another way ‘and pitched his tent among us’. The Word, like Wisdom, is from God
from all eternity, one with God, is God. As we read in the verses that are
omitted from our first reading, like Wisdom the Word gave being to all that is,
he is the source of all things.
His way prepared by John he comes to his own people though they are not
ready to receive him so that a new people, those ‘who did accept him’ become
the new Israel, the new dwelling place of God. In his appearing among us in
Jesus, we have seen ‘the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full
of grace and truth’.
Finally, the writer
declares ‘’No one has ever seen God , it is the only Son, who is nearest to the
Father’s heart, who has made him known’.
There is so much more
that could be said of this wonderful text but it does sum uop our whole belief
about the Incarnation, the taking of flesh by God’. The One who is from the
beginning with God and who is God has come into our world in flesh and blood
like our own so that in him we might see God. We can no longer see him but he
tells us that if we would see him we must look to one another and there we will
find him.
The reading from
Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is the beginning of the great Thanksgiving with
which the Letter begins. It is couched in the sort of language found in Jewish
blessings and in it Paul celebrates the role of Christ and of Christians in
God’s plan to unite in Christ all things in heaven and on earth. Once again
this is part of God’s plan from ‘before the world was made’. The Church, Jesus’
followers, have been chosen from all
eternity, that is we ourselves have been chosen to become God’s adopted
‘children’ (not ‘sons’!) ‘to live through love in his presence’ and to ‘make us
praise the glory of his grace’. We are to be a people of thanksgiving,
thanksgiving for the mystery that has been revealed to us.
Paul then prays for
the Ephesian Christians that, among other things, they may be given ‘a spirit
of wisdom and perception of what is revealed’. This must be our prayer today,
that we may come to an ever fuller understanding of that which has been
revealed to us in Jesus.
On this second Sunday
in Christmastime it would be good to read the great Prologue of John’s Gospel
again, slowly and thoughtfully and to give thanks for our calling, to be the
Church. Our role is to be the ongoing presence of the incarnate Christ in the
world, to be those who give thanks for all that has been revealed to us as we
make Eucharist together and by the love we have for one another and for all to
show the face of Christ to others in our flesh and blood.
Today is like a second
chance to celebrate Christmas before the season comes to an end and to be
amazed once again at the twofold mystery of Christ’s coming among us and of our
being chosen to be his continuing presence in the world.
Monday January 4th. Monday in Christmastide before the Epiphany.
Readings
First Letter of John 3/7-10 :
John 1/35-42
We continue to read
from the first letter of John which we began last week. We saw how the letter
was written by someone who followed the tradition of John’s Gospel but was not
the same author. It was almost certainly written after the Gospel around the
year 100 C.E. and it is addressed to a community who had had serious divisions
within it.
In today’s reading the
author distinguishes very powerfully between those who are ‘begotten by God’
and those who are ‘children of the devil’. Whatever we may think about a
personal devil, the writer is saying, yet again, that we can recognise those
who are begotten by God by the way in which they live their lives. Those who do
not love their brother or sister have forfeited their right, as it were, to be
known as children of God. This reminds us yet again that the Kingdom or Reign
of God is universal and wherever there is love, the Kingdom of God is already
there. Ours is it is to be constantly on the lookout for people of every faith
and none who live good and loving lives and to give God the praise.
The Gospel reading
continues from that of yesterday and after John has declared Jesus to be the
One of whom he has been speaking, the two disciples of John leave him to follow
Jesus. John had said that he must disappear as Jesus appears and here it is
happening already. The two disciples of John ‘followed’ Jesus which, in this
context must mean that they literally began to walk after him though it must
also mean that they became his ‘followers’ or disciples.
They address Jesus as
‘Rabbi’ or teacher but during the course of the Gospel they will come to see
that he is much more than that. Jesus puts to them a simple question ‘What do
you want?’ and it is almost as if they are embarrassed to have been caught
walking along behind him so that they give what seems to be a rather foolish
answer ,’Rabbi, where do you live?’ However, Jesus response is simple, ’Come
and see’ and they are hooked! The Gospel writer tells us that it was four
o’clock in the afternoon and so we can imagine them passing the whole evening
and, perhaps, the whole night with Jesus, listening to him and asking him
questions.
When people ask about
our faith perhaps, instead of trying to tell them, we ought to be able to say
‘Come and see’. but, in fact, our communities are often so uninviting that we
would not feel able to do that. This is something we must change.
One of the two
disciples, Andrew, seems to have spent the night with Jesus and next morning
goes off to find his brother Simon Peter to tell him about Jesus. He tells his
brother that they have found the Messiah, the Anointed One, which is an amazing
assertion but it brings Peter to Jesus who gives him a new name, ‘Cephas’ which
means ‘a rock’. Although Peter did not live up to that title and even betrayed
Jesus, those hearing this Gospel will know that Jesus’ words have become true
and that Simon Peter has become a rock of strength for the young church and,
indeed, he has laid down his life for it already by this time.
This Gospel reading is
an invitation for us to ‘come and see’, to get to know Jesus and his message
through the words of the Gospel and to become ever more truly his faithful
followers and imitators. Perhaps we might resolve to read the Gospels more
thoughtfully and to reflect on them each
day so that we get to know the Lord better and become his more faithful
followers.
Tuesday January 5th. Tuesday in Christmastide before the
Epiphany.
Readings
First
Letter of John 3/11-12 John 1/43-51
The reading from the
first letter of John today is a long development of the commandment that we
should love one another. The writer explains that hatred is a form of murder,
even if we don’t do the act. We are called to love one another because we have
passed out of the death of selfishness and sin into the new life of love, the
life of God. That love is not just words, it must be so strong that we are
willing to lay down our lives for one another and to share what we have with
someone else who is in need. It all sounds easy until we realise that it means
that I ought to be ready to die for the person who is sitting in front of me at
Mass. Perhaps, with whom I was irritated because she didn’t control her
children very well or because he sang out of tune! It means that I ought to be
ready to ask the person sitting next to me and who looks a bit shabby and down
at heel if they need any help even financial! We may be far from that but we
cannot escape the fact that that is what the author is actually saying and it
is enjoined by Jesus’ teaching. Each of us needs to think long and hard about
that. What the writer is saying is that ‘our love must not be just words and
mere talk but something real and active’ and so we have to struggle to make
that a reality in our lives.
In the Gospel reading
which has run over four days we come to the end of this section of John’s
Gospel. In itwe see Jesus calling Philip and Nathanael. Philip, Andrew and
Simon Peter all come from Bethsaida and
all had Greek names and it is to these disciples that the Greeks will come
later in the Gospel.
There is a succession
in the story as Philip who has found Jesus whom he believes to be the Messiah
in his turn finds Nathanael and brings him to Jesus telling him that this man
is the Messiah who had been foretold by the prophets. Nathanael quotes what must
have been a proverb that no good could come out of Nazareth but again Philip
simply says ‘Come and see’. Jesus, meanwhile, declares that Nathanael is
‘without deceit’ or, in other words, he is honest and true and able to
recognise all that was promised in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus astonishes
Nathanael by telling him that he had already noticed him ‘under a fig tree’.
Nathanael takes this as rather wonderful and declares Jesus to be, indeed, ‘the
Son of God and the King of Israel’. These statements indicate Nathanael’s
limited view of the Messiah and so Jesus goes on to tell him that he will see
‘even greater things’ and he alludes to the story of Jacob who saw the heavenly
ladder in a dream. This is a way of declaring the true identity of Jesus which
Nathanael had not, as yet, grasped.
The repetition of
‘Come and see’ reminds us of what was said yesterday. Could we say to anyone
who was interested ‘Come and see’?
Wednesday January 6th. The Solemnity of the Epiphany or the
Manifestation of Christ.
Today, as the twelve
days of Christmas come to an end we
celebrate what has been from the earliest times, one of the greatest feasts of
the year, ranking with Easter and Pentecost. The feast originated in the East where
it was, at first, a celebration of the Lord’s Baptism together, sometimes, with
his birth. From the fourth century on there is ample evidence of the feast
being widely celebrated, often in connection with the solemn blessing of the
water for Baptism.
In the fourth century
the feast began to be celebrated in the Western Church but it soon lost its
character as a celebration of Jesus’ Baptism and became associated with the
manifestation of Christ to the non-Jewish peoples represented by the Magi or
Wise Men who in the gospel story as Matthew tells it came to visit the child
Jesus. Saint Leo the Great who was bishop of Rome from 440 to 461 , in his
homilies, speaks of this feast as the ‘Theophania’ as it was called in Rome,
which is another name for ‘manifestation’ as the celebration of this
manifestation of Christ to the non-Jewish peoples. The blessing of water
disappeared and became part of the celebration of Easter and the story of the
Magi became central to this day. . In the Eastern churches this feast has
continued to be, primarily, the celebration fo Jesus’ Baptism. However, in the
Western Church, in the days following this feast, the Baptism of Jesus was till
celebrated as was the wedding feast at Cana and also the finding of the child
Jesus in the Temple at the age of twelve. After the revision of our Calendar
following the Second Vatican Council, a feast of the Baptism of Jesus was
placed on the Sunday after the Epiphany.
While Christmas is, I
many ways, a more homely feast and though it is the celebration of the Word
made flesh , an earth shattering event, we celebrate it in the context of the
simple birth of a child to a young and ordinary couple. Today we celebrate this
same event as having world-wide importance because the Word has come among us
not just for the Children of Israel, the Jews but for all the peoples of the
world.
Readings
Isaiah 60/1-6 :
Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 3/2-3, 5-6 :
Matthew 2/1-12
The readings
concentrate on the visit of the Wise Men to the child Jesus and are dominated
by Matthew’s account of that event which is so familiar to us.
The reading from the
prophet Isaiah is an obvious choice. It comes from the third section of the
book of Isaiah, written later, some time after 515 B.C.E. and is set, no longer in Babylon, but in
Palestine. This section moves from disappointment to a glorious future as in
the extract we read today. The object of God’s promise is no longer Israel but
the faithful Jews together with those of other nations. In today’s reading the
prophet speaks of nations and kings coming to Israel bringing with them wealth
and prosperity, riding on camels and dromedaries and bearing gifts of gold and
incense. It is from this reading that the Wise Men in Matthew’s story have
become kings though there is nothing in Matthew’s account to suggest that they
were.
In Paul’s letter to
the Galatian Christians written between 54 and 57 C.E. he is telling them in no uncertain terms that
the mystery of God’s promise is made to people of every race so that they are
able to become part of the same body, the Church, as their Jewish sisters and
brothers. This exactly what we are celebrating today, that God in Christ, is
revealed to all the peoples of the world.
As
we read the Gospel story the first thing for us to remember is that Matthew is
writing his Gospel for those Jews who have become followers of Jesus and so his
purpose is to help them see how Jesus is the fulfilment of all that is written
in the Hebrew Scriptures. For this reason Matthew makes an obvious comparison
between Moses and Jesus who is the ‘new’ Moses. In the story of Moses we find
the wicked tyrant Pharoah and the slaughter of the Hebrew boys, the flight into
Egypt by Moses after he has killed the Egyptian slave-driver and then his
return from Egypt. All these incidents are mirrored in the story of the child
Jesus, the slaughter of the innocent children by the tyrant Herod, the flight
of Jesus and his parents into Egypt and their return when it is safe.
Various explanations
have been given for the ‘wise men’ but the best seems to be that the model for
the Magi in the Hebrew Scriptures is the pagan seer Balaam (Numbers chapters
22-24). In Numbers 24/17 we read ‘a star shall come forth out of Jacob and a
sceptre shall arise out of Israel’ and Balaam is called by ancient writers a
‘magos’ or Wise Man.
A further idea arises
from the story of the Magi and that is that they are a model for non-Jewish
believers. Matthew’s Gospel ends with the risen Lord’s command ‘to make
disciples of all the Gentiles’ and in that setting Matthew says that the
disciples ‘paid homage’ to Jesus, the same term which features so prominently
in the story of the Gentile Magi.
A further contrast
made by Matthew is between the Gentile Magi who sincerely wish to pay homage to
the ‘king of the Jews’ and Herod who claims to be the king of the Jews and only
pretends that he wants to offer homage to Jesus. Thus the Magi prefigure the
non-Jews who are also part of the community for whom Matthew is writing his
Gospel.
Whether the Magi ever
visited Jesus remains an open question for scholars and, probably, can never e
definitively decided. What is important
is what this story meant for Matthew and
his community. Here we see very clearly how Matthew wanted to present Jesus as
very firmly rooted in Jewish history and clearly foreshadowed by the Jewish
Scriptures and more especially by Moses who led the Israelites out of the
slavery of Egypt. Jesus would be the One who would lead not only the Jewish
people but the whole human family out of the slavery of selfishness and sin
into the Promised Land of God’s Kingdom or Reign.
A further element in
today’s feast which does not come out to so clearly in the Mass readings as in
the Prayer of the Church for today is the link both with Jesus’ Baptism and
with the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee. Both are seen as manifestations of
Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God and both are linked with the idea of the
heavenly marriage between God and humankind which is brought about in the
Incarnation .
In his Baptism by John
in the Jordan river, we see Jesus’ total identification of himself with sinful
humanity and in the Cana marriage feast
is an image of the wedding of God with humankind which has taken place
by the Word assuming our humanity, being wedded to it.
These themes are upon
which we may want to reflect are beautifully linked together in the antiphon
which is sung before and after the ‘Benedictus’, the Song of Zachariah at
Morning Prayer today.
Today,
the heavenly lover is joined with his beloved, for in the Jordan river he has
washed away all our sins. Meanwhile ,
bearing their gifts the Wise Men hasten to the Royal Wedding Feast and the
guests make merry and rejoice drinking the water that has become wine.
In this poetic gathering together of the
various ideas associated with today’s feast we see more clearly what it is that
we are celebrating. The Word has become flesh and is one of us in his humanity
and we and all humankind are wedded with God for all eternity. All the world’s
peoples with all their gifts will be gathered into that great reign of
love which he comes to proclaim and
finally, all will rejoice in that final banquet which is prefigured by the
Eucharist which we would normally meet to celebrate today.
We pray today for the Church that we may, once
again, be united as one great family and that we may show the world that great
banquet of love which is God’s Kingdom by the way in which we live as a community,
gathering around the Lord’s Table frequently and loving one another as sisters
and brothers.
Thursday January 7th. Thursday after
the Epiphany. Memory of Saint Raymond of Penafort
Readings
First Letter of John 3/22 – 4/6 :
Matthew 12/17, 23-25
During this week of Epiphanytide we continue to
read from the first Letter of John. In today’s extract the writer continues to
develop the theme that it is necessary to keep the commandments in order to
lead the kind of life that God wants us to lead and that means, as he has said
before, loving one another and believing in the name of God’s son, Jesus
Christ. These would seem to be the very points of faith in which the false
propagandists, the ‘antichrists’ were lacking.
The remaining verses in today’s reading,
chapter 41-6, invoke the test ‘by their fruits you shall know them’ in order to
discern the false prophets with their claim of being led by the Spirit. There
is, the writer says, a Spirit of God and a spirit of antichrist and every
spirit-led person who acknowledges Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh
belongs to God. More practically, the
principle, the writer says, ‘Anyone who knows God listens to us’ becomes a way
of distinguishing the spirit of truth
from the spirit of deceit. Of course, we may guess that those who ‘gone away’
are directing the same argument against the author and his followers, for them
he is the one who has the spirit of deceit. Finally, the author encourages
those to whom he is addressing his letter by reminding them that they have
already overcome these false prophets who are ‘from the world’ and ‘speak the
language of the world’ and he assures them that god listens to them even if
those ‘who are not of God’ refuse to listen.
The thought which we can hold on to in this extract
is surely what the author repeatedly says that we must love one another and we
can detect those who are ‘of God’ by the love they have for one another and for
everyone. That is also the test that we must apply to ourselves since it is the
love we have for others which demonstrates and proves our love for God.
The Gospel readings during Epiphanytide are all
about Jesus and how he is a revelation of the Father in both his deeds and his
words.
In the Gospel reading today Matthew continues
his story, locating as he always does, the place where the event happens, today
in Capernaum, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah (Is.9/1-2). Again it is John
the Baptist who provides the link between what is old and what is new. Jesus’
ministry begins only after John has been arrested. John’s arrest foreshadows
Jesus’ own fate (the Greek for ‘arrested’ can be translated as ‘handed over’ or
even ‘betrayed’ which is the same verb used by Matthew to describe Jesus’
destiny later.)
When Jesus begins to preach his message is
exactly that of John (Matthew 3/2). The old is fulfilled and recapitulated in
the new.
The reference to ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ in
the fulfilment quotation from Isaiah
hints at what the end of the story will confirm that this light is for all the
nations and not just for Israel. Although Matthew derived much of his material
from Mark’s Gospel, he slightly moves Mark’s account of Jesus’ first preaching.
In Mark 1/15 Jesus says ‘the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at
hand, repent and believe the Gospel’. Matthew’s account of the same
proclamation is ‘Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near’. The presence
of the Kingdom is both the gift and the obligation and this is good news, first
of all to Israel and then to the whole world.
The mission to Israel begins with the calling
of the disciples, the verses which, strangely, we leave out of the reading
today We are not told whether the disciples had ever seen Jesus before or even
heard of him but we are given a sense of pure authority by which Jesus can
command and the disciples obey.
We will see as the Gospel continues that these
disciples fulfil a variety of functions. That they are Twelve represents the twelve
tribes of Israel since they will lead the new Israel. They also represent the
church leaders of Matthew’s own time and they represent all of us who hear or
read the story. The blessings and the
challenges given to them are given to us as well.
In the verses we read today Jesus begins his
ministry with the fulfilment of the prophecies about the Messiah as he
proclaims Good News and heals the sick. His fame would spread and large crowds
would follow him.
This is the continuation of what we saw on the feast
of the Epiphany as Jesus reveals God in his words and in his works, a God who
is love and who has compassion for his people.
During these days of Epiphanytide we can
reflect on the mystery that has been revealed to us in Christ and how we, his
living Body in the world, are to continue that work of revealing God by our
Acts of compassion and love and by the simplicity of our faith in the God who
is love.
Memory of Raymond of Penafort (1175-1275)
B orn in Spain Raymond was teaching at the
University of Bologna by the age of twenty where he was greatly admired by his
students. He then went to Italy to study Law and therehe became renowned for
his great compassion for the poor. Although Raymond had begun to climb the
ecclesiastical ladder of promotion, at the age of forty seven he put all that
behind him And joined the Dominican
friars and he became remarkable for his humility in sharing the Novitiate with
those only half his age.
Once professed as a friar, Raymond preached all
over Europe and had a great influence on all who heard him. After some years he
was called to Rome to be Spiritual Director of the then Pope who he urged to
remain poor and to put the poor first always. During this period, because of
his legal background, Raymond was able to codify the vast mass of Church Law
into a single work which would remain in use for the next seven hundred years!
Although Raymond was made a bishop he was not
happy in that post and, becoming seriously ill, he was released from his charge
and returned to preaching and counselling innumerable people. He was then
called by the Friars to be their Master General and in his short period of
office he managed to visit every house of the Order, calling the friars back to
simplicity of life, and to prayer and service.
At the age of sixty five Raymond resigned his
position saying he was too old to continue in the role of Master General but he
then lived for another thirty five years
preaching and counselling until his death at the age of one hundred.
We remember the Dominican friars and sisters
today and all their associates and we remember too all those who are elderly
that we may recognise their gifts and their wisdom.
Friday January 8th. Friday in Epiphanytide.
Readings
First letter of John 4/7-10 :
Mark 6/34-44
The reading from the Letter of John today
deserves to be read over and over again because it contains very succinctly the
heart of Jesus’ teaching.
As the writer said at the beginning of his
letter ‘God is light’ he now makes the ringing proclamation that ‘God is love’.
We know this, not because of anything we may have done in loving God but
because God took the initiative of sending the only Son into the world so that
we might have life and our sins be washed away.
More than that, the writer says that ‘anyone
who fails to love can never have known God’.
This means that all those who do love do know
God. This is an astonishing statement
because it means that everyone in their loving does actually know God.
That is where we experience God. Not in some sort of religious ‘experience’ or
in a moment of exhilaration in prayer but in loving another person. Every human
being experiences God in the love that they have for others. Even the greatest
sinner has known God in those moments
when love has penetrated their lives. If we want to find God that is where we
must look. In a mother’s love for her wayward child, in a down and out’s love
for his little dog, his only companion and so on. The list is endless so why do
we look anywhere else? If we open our eyes we will see that the world is ablaze
with the presence of God wherever we look. The Epiphany is a dail;y reality
happening all the time!
This is the proclamation that the Church ought
to be making constantly. God is love and wherever there is love God is there as
we sing ‘Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est’.
The Gospel reading relates one of the two
occasions in Mark’s Gospel when Jesus feeds the hungry crowds. Once again this
is a manifestation of the God whom Jesus proclaims. The key words in this
reading are ‘He took pity on them because they were like sheep without a
shepherd’. The image is a powerful one. A flock of sheep without a shepherd
will stray everywhere ending up in dangerous places or being exposed to wild
beasts. It is not for nothing that we still use the same image for people being
‘like a flock of sheep’ running aimlessly this way and that. Jesus takes pity,
he has compassion for the people and he teaches them at some length.
We can imagine what Jesus might have been
saying, that God is love and that God loves them even if they were not very
good at keeping the Law or were sinners in various ways. He knew that those who
ought to have been their leaders and shepherds had betrayed them and thought
more of their own importance and the meticulous keeping of the Law than trying
to help them to live better and more fulfilled lives.
Jesus talks at such great length and,
presumably, the people were gripped by his teaching that it was getting late
and they were hungry. Jesus’ pity extends to their material needs. He rejects
the disciples’ suggestion that he send the people away to get food at home
since some of them may have travelled a long way. The disciples think of the
cost rather than the people’s need.
However what happens next may be explained, it
is obvious that it is meant to remind Mark’s readers of the Eucharist, the meal
that they share together regularly in fulfilment of Jesus’ dying wish. It is
difficult to imagine how the multiplication of the loaves and fish might have
happened. Apart from it being a direct miracle, and even then it is not easy to
imagine the manner in which it might have been done, one explanation does seem
to make sense.
That is that whoever came forward to offer what
they had, inspired everyone to open their haversacks and to share what they
had. This would have been a very real
miracle and it is unlikely that these simple yet practical people would have
left home without having some provisions in their bag. Here Jesus’ teaching may
have touched their hearts so that they became willing to share with those who,
perhaps, they had never met before. The amount left over is significant ,
twelve baskets full, reminding Marks’ readers that there was enough in Jesus’
teaching for the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
In this passage Jesus reveals God in his
compassion and love for the crowds, both in his teaching, one presumes in a
simple way, since they were gripped by his words and forget the time and in
feeding them by showing them that they could and should feed one another.
The Eucharist must have been in the mind of
both the writer and his readers since, at he Lord’s Table there is enough for
everyone and, nourished by his word, Jesus’ followers share the bread of his
body and the cup of his blood to bind them together in a community of sharing
and love.
This is what the Eucharist ought to be for us
today. This is a sacred meal in which Jesus unites us to himself and with one
another to make us the sign of his loving presence in the world, his Body. We
are called to be his Epiphany in our celebration of his own meal and in our
life together as well as in our love and care for all who are in need. This
must be the ideal towards which we strive.
Saturday January 9th. Saturday in Epiphanytide.
Readings
First Letter of John 4/11-18 :
Mark 6/45-52
Today’s reading from the letter of John
continues the extraordinary theme of yesterday. Developing the idea that god is
love the writer goes on to say that since God has loved us so much in sending
us Jesus, we ought to love one another. That must be our response to God’s love
but then the writer makes a very direct and dramatic statement, ‘No one has
ever seen God!’ This rather puts into question all those who claim to have had
visions of one sort or another! The writer goes on to say that ‘as long as we
love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us’. This
is the proof that god is in us, that we love one another. This again rather
puts in doubt all those so-called experiences of God, ‘slaying in the Spirit’
and the like. It also extends the presence of God to those of every faith and
none who love. If we acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in us
and we in God, says the writer but that doesn’t negate his first assertion that
if we love one another God lives in us. It would seem to be a further assurance
for the believer that this faith also assures of God’s indwelling. The author
goes on to say that ‘love will come to perfection in us’ so that ‘we can face
the Day of Judgement without fear’. ‘Fear is driven out by perfect love’ the
writer says and if we are still afraid it is because we have not learnt to love
enough or to believe in God’s love for us.
These few verses are, again, worth reading and
re-reading because they sum up so perfectly Jesus’ teaching and contradict so
firmly so much of what our church has taught. How many people have been driven
not by the belief that God loved them but by the fear of the punishment God
would mete out to them for their sins. That is just not Jesus’ teaching and the
only ones for whom Jesus ever has condemnation are those who pretend to be
religious but are, in fact, hypocrites.
The Gospel reading follows on from that of
yesterday and is, again, a manifestation of God through Jesus. Having made sure
that the crowds were fed Jesus realises that the disciples need a break from
the crowds and sends them away. He himself stays behind to bid the crowds
farewell and send them on their way and then he goes into the hills to pray
alone.
Meanwhile the disciples are far out on the lake
and the wind is against them and they are, obviously, worn out with rowing.
Then it was that they saw Jesus though they found it difficult to believe that
it was him as he came towards them through the early morning mist. They thought
they were seeing a ghost but Jesus re-assures them with ‘Courage. It is I!’ and
he joins them in the boat as the storm calms so that all is well. The Gospel
writer adds that they were ‘utterly and completely dumbfounded’ because ‘they
had not seen what the miracle of the loaves meant, their minds were closed’.
It is important to note that, at the end of
this passage, the disciples are criticised roundly because ‘their minds were
closed’ or a better translation would be ‘their hearts were hardened’. This is
a theme in Mark’s Gospel which is difficult for us to grasp that the disciples
were, in some mysterious way, prevented from understanding by God. Their
disbelief is the background, as it were, for the reader of hearer to affirm
their faith in Jesus.
The failure to understand the feeding of the
crowds may also allude to the failure of Mark’s community for whom he was
writing, to understand the Eucharist as the sacred meal where both Jews and
non-Jews were welcome. We may draw this from the fact that the feeding of the
crowds which we read about yesterday took place in Jewish territory whereas the
other feeding about which we read later in the Gospel takes place in non-Jewish
territory.
Jesus shows his power over the waves in a way
which recalls many passages in Scripture
where God is depicted as the One who has power over the waters, not
least at the Exodus from Egypt but in many other places also.
Though the disciples fail to understand, mark’s
readers believe that Jesus has this power and they have faith in him.
There are two challenges for us in this Gospel
reading today. Firstly, have we understood what the miracle of the loaves
means? Week by week or even more often we have witnessed the miracle of the
loaves, not in transubstantiation which is a doctrine that scarcely helps the
modern mind but in the miracle of Jesus’ gathering around himself the people of
the Church to share bread and wine together, when he has promised that he would
be among them giving himself to them to strengthen them and enable them to be
his Body in the world. Sadly, we have become so fixed on the way in which Jesus
makes himself present among us that we have almost forgotten the reason for his
doing so. As the old saying has it, ‘it is the Eucharist that makes the Church’
and this is the real miracle.
Secondly, we must learn to have more faith that
the Lord is with us, even when the mists make it difficult for us to discern
his presence. He has assured us that he would be with us and this until the end
of the ages. We must have faith that, in spite of all its troubles and
failings, the Lord is with his Church guiding us and leading us by his Spirit
but are we open to hear what the Spirit is saying and where she is leading us?
That’s the question.
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