REFLECTION ON THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

It is a common feature of our human existence that, when we are ill or injured, we suffer as entire human beings. I might break a leg and say just that to those around me. But the fact is that as a whole person, I suffer from the injured leg. The exhaustion that pain brings, affects me in my entirety. The side-effects of medication affect me as a whole. I cannot isolate the affected part of my body and let the rest get on as though nothing has happened. It has a function that the others cannot assume. My broken leg, for example, affects the way I walk. I cannot drive, I cannot climb stairs. I cannot kick a ball or dance. My entire existence is coloured by the malfunction of that one broken leg.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses the analogy of the human body to describe the Church of Jesus Christ. The Church is not simply a group of people with common beliefs. We are bound together in a close unity; we are a single entity. No-one thinks of a human family as a group of adults and children who just happen to occupy the same house. A family of parents and children think of themselves as a single entity, and that is how we live, especially when the children are still young. When a child is seriously ill, it is the parents who agonise, who sit up during sleepless nights looking after the child until the danger has passed. As children, when a brother or sister is lost, we worry and cry until the missing child has been found. On the other hand, when someone who has been injured emerges healed from hospital, when a child celebrates a birthday or wins a prize, we all rejoice together.

The Church, as Paul teaches, is even closer. We are all brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus and as such, sons and daughters of God. We are bound together more closely than any human body, more intimately than any human family. We are in fact a world-wide family, drawn from every nation, language, culture, people. We really are brothers and sisters in Christ, sons and daughters of God the Father. We all share in each other’s sufferings and joys. When a child in a family is sick, the mother pays more attention to that child, not because she loves him more, but because at that particular moment he has a greater need of her love. It is the same with members of the Church. We cannot allow ourselves to remain unaffected by the suffering of our brothers and sisters in famine and war.

This idea of mutual concern and love is a central concern of Pope Francis, an integral part of his message. Indeed, it is a central part of the message of Jesus Christ: “Love one another, just as I have loved you…whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers you do unto me.” It is not a social, economic or political message, nor must it ever be allowed to be reduced to one or more of these. It is both simpler and more profound: that, as John puts it, “God is love,” and that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. We can never be indifferent to the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ and still claim to love and serve God. Like a father – for God is Our Father – we must care for and love each other as he cares for and loves us, “…so much that he gave his only-begotten Son.” There are many needs in the Church today; let us all respond to them with love, with prayer, with care and generosity, to the fullness of our ability to do so.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Today’s Scripture readings gather together several close images from scripture: marriage, joy, wine and the Spirit. The presence of God’s Spirit is always associated with joy. A wedding feast is an occasion of joy, and an essential element of the joyfulness at Biblical wedding feasts is wine. We see the near panic that sets in at Cana when the steward discovers that the wine is running out, and the relief when this turns out not to be so. We see the expressions of joy and love that are expressed on such occasions, too: “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” In the Book of Revelation, the coming of the New Jerusalem, the establishment of the eternal home of God’s people is described in these terms: “The marriage-feast of the Lamb has come, and the Bride has made herself ready…the Spirit and the Bride say “Come!”

There is something very touching about a wedding: the young groom standing in the aisle, waiting radiantly to receive his bride as she approaches; the smiles and easy laughter as people recall that day in their own lives. And, of course, the wine that flows and makes the simplest of remarks amusing. Such is the joy which flows from such an occasion that even the time worn old jokes, without which no wedding is complete, are received with good will and humour. Whether it is the drinks that draw uncle Bertie or not, the joy and the jokes still seem him at his best, his most humourous.

God saw his people of the Old Covenant, Israel, as his bride. He sees his new people, the Church, as a bride. And always the image is one of joy and gladness. But the core of Christian joy is, of course, the outpouring of God’s Spirit. It is a joy that not even adversity can overcome. “For even if the fields stand empty of grain and the barns stand empty of cattle, yet I will rejoice in the Lord,” says the prophet Habakkuk”. It is God who brings us through those terrible times; it is still God who causes rain to fall. The same God who turned the disaster if the wedding feast into joy by serving the best wine last will bring rain to our troubled country, and turn desperation into joy. Keep on asking God to intercede for an end to our current drought!

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD

To understand the meaning of the waters of baptism in scripture, we must for a moment forget our modern mental picture of a baptism; the pouring of water over the baby’s forehead, the parents and godparents looking on lovingly. Water for the Hebrews was a symbol of great violence and destruction. They lived in dry places, in which rainstorms deluged everything. They said, “Water can put out fire, but who can stop a flood?” Imagine being washed away by a flood in the darkness of night in the days before modern lighting.

Before the Creation, there was darkness, surging water everywhere. Water equalled chaos for the Hebrews. But in the beginning, “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” Through the Spirit, God separates land from sea. Out of chaos and lifelessness, God creates life by rolling back the power of the waters. There is also the great Flood. God uses the destructive power of water to wash away the sin of the world, and at the same time to save those in the Ark; Noah, his family and the animals. The first sign of God’s relenting is the return of the dove, bearing an olive twig in its beak. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, from slavery to freedom, water was the instrument of both the destruction of God’s enemy, and the salvation of those whom he loved. Lastly, there is Joshua’s damming up of the river Jordan, which allowed the Israelites to cross over into the land that God had promised them.

All this is behind Jesus’ going down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptised. Out of the waters Jesus emerges, bringing new life and a new creation, just as in the beginning, God brought life out of the watery chaos when he created the heavens and the earth. The waters which Jesus makes holy through his baptism, are a Flood of tremendous force that destroys sin and gives eternal life to the one who is baptised. By passing through the waters of baptism, Jesus re-enacts the passage through the Red Sea, a passage from the slavery of sin, to freedom. Baptism becomes for the Christian a new Crossing of the Red Sea, a passing from death to life, while the might of the evil one is destroyed in those same waters. And Jesus crosses the Jordan in the same way as the Israelites entered the Promised Land for the first time. He comes to the Promised Land, to the Chosen People, to bring them the Good News of their salvation. But whereas Joshua brought the Israelites to their promised land, Jesus, “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” brings the Promised Land, heaven, to them.

In the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit has surged through us like a torrent, blasting away the stain of sin, restoring us to lost innocence and new birth in Christ, whose image has been indelibly imprinted upon us. As we contemplate today his Baptism in the Jordan, may he be at work within the hearts of each one of us; and may he bring that image of himself to fullness within each one of us. To him be glory for ever and ever. 

Amen.

Fr. Phillip