When Jesus ‘falls’ in love

Homily for 5^th Sunday of Easter year C 2013

I went to a retreat in the last couple of days with 30 others young adults, all leaders for the Victorian World Youth Day pilgrims in Millgrove. During the first night we had this activity called ‘getting to know you.’ We are asked questions that speak something about ourselves. One question was ‘If there is one person dead or alive you wanted to have dinner with, who would it be?’ I’m amazed of the answers. Obviously many chose the famous celebrities, like David Attenborough, or the Obamas in America or Keith Urban, or their dead grandfather, etc. However, not one in my group, myself included (how embarrassing) chose to have Jesus for dinner. I’m surprised and a bit ashamed of myself for not choosing Jesus. Fortunately, no one in my group dared to point it out to me otherwise I could have said ‘That’s my plan B.’ But as I reflect back on that activity, I said to myself: ‘It might just be for fun but it really reveals something of myself and also who or what other young people aspire to be in company with.’ I’m not going to tell you who I wanted to have dinner with as I answered the question that night, but to be honest with you, I didn’t choose Jesus.

Due to my Sunday commitments here with you I had to leave the retreat earlier. The retreat ends later today. I drove for three hours last night to get back home. It’s a long drive especially I’m on my own, but it made me think why didn’t I choose Jesus to have dinner with?

I found one reason from the gospel for today. In our gospel today from John (Jn 13:31-35), Jesus issued a challenge if you like, to his disciples. And if we read the text just before this gospel, Jesus threw the challenge during the last supper, during dinner, after Judas Iscariot had left.

This is one reason I can see now, why I didn’t say I want to have dinner with Jesus. It is because I don’t want to be challenged by him. I just wanted to enjoy the meal, to enjoy the company.

However, whether we like it or not Jesus is challenging us all today. And what is his challenge? Listen to what he said: ‘Love one another’. It sounds easy. We can do that. Anyone can do that. We might say: It’s not challenging! True, but there is more to this. Jesus added: ‘Just as have loved you, you must love one another.’ Here’s the rub. Jesus is commanding us (I give you a new commandment) to love one another the way he does.

**To love one another like Jesus does, we need to have a look on how does Jesus ‘fall’ in love?**

Firstly, He loves God, his Father so much. He is always obedient to his Father’s will. He always listens first to his Father in prayer and solitude for everything he does. He is so united with his Father in love and that gives him strength and power. The good news is that we are all invited to experience in ourselves this love between the Father and the Son. And we can make this happen in us, with the grace of God if we always allow God to be the source and the motivation of all the good things we do, if we listen always to Jesus and if we do whatever he tells us to do through the Church, through the Scriptures and through our Traditions.

Secondly, Jesus, our Lord and our God, loves us indiscriminately. He doesn’t look at us in terms of our nationalities, skin colour, social status, educational profile, etc. He loves us all the same no matter how sinful we think we are, no matter if we live in his love or not, no matter if we are loving or not, no matter if we reject his offer of love or not. The greatest proof of this is the Cross. If we want to see for ourselves how much God loves us, let us just contemplate on the mystery of the Cross.

Thirdly, Jesus loves his enemies. ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing’ (Lk 23:34) And he urges us to do the same. He said: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again’ (Lk 6:27ff). This is a new commandment indeed. And this is hard but it is not impossible. Jesus wasn’t only telling us this. He really showed it in his life. And we ought to follow him in this way. We need to understand though that to love someone doesn’t mean we have to like them. Loving is different from liking. This reminds me of a Vietnamese seminarian in the seminary with me. He was asked one dinnertime if he likes the food because he just filled his plate with the lot. He said: ‘I can eat everything, but it doesn’t mean I always like them.’ One thing I do to show that I love that someone even if I don’t like him or her (I might be a priest but I am human too you know) is to pray for the person regularly. I just said: ‘Lord, you know that I don’t like this person, but look after him/ her. Take care of him/her.’ I can attest that this prayer really works. It’s slowly becoming good.

So as we continue our celebration of the Mass today, I invite you to make two resolutions: First, invite Jesus to have dinner with you. This means allowing him to be there in all aspects of your life (family, workplace, community life, etc.) He might be throwing a challenge at us but he would also give us the strength and the power to face it. Second, let us resolve to be more loving by following the way Jesus loves us all. One way to do this is to imitate what Paul and Barnabas did in our First Reading today. ‘They put fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith’ (Acts 14:22). This is also our mission when we are baptized, to show that we love one another. This is an important mission because as Jesus would say to us now: [‘By] this love you have for one another everyone will know that you are my disciples’ (Jn 13:35).

Baptism of Jesus: Moment of Grace for us

Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus 2013

Year C (13 January 2013)

Today we celebrate the feast the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist at the river Jordan. In our liturgical calendar, this feast marks the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of the ordinary time. Some homilists would even consider this day as the third epiphany, with Christmas as the first one through the visit of the shepherds to the manger when they heard from the angel the news of the birth of Jesus. The second epiphany is the solemnity of the Epiphany itself which we celebrated last Sunday, i.e. when God reveals himself to the nations through the visit of some wise men from the East. And today’s feast marks the third one when God, as the Holy Trinity reveals the true identity of Jesus.

It is interesting to note that in the first manifestation of God, the Shepherds were led by the Angels. In the second, the wise men were led by a star. And the third manifestation, it’s the Holy Trinity (the first time to be noted in the gospels) that reveals the true identity of Jesus himself.

To celebrate this day and to understand what really does the baptism of Jesus mean for us, we need to reflect on three events occurring at his baptism.

First, is that heaven was opened above the place in the water where Jesus was standing. According to Mark Link, S.J., in his commentary on this text, this opening of the heaven scene “recalls the prayer of Isaiah [Is 64:1), where the prophet pleads with God to ‘tear open the sky’ and come down and set things right on earth.”[1]

Second is the descending of the Holy Spirit (like a dove) upon Jesus. Again, Link would say that this event points back to the Genesis story [Gen 1]of the Spirit of God hovering the waters and which put order out of chaos. So this signals a new moment of creation.

Third is the voice of the Father ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.” This confirmation of the Father points out to us that Jesus is the new Adam, God’s firstborn son of the new creation.[2]

So Jesus’ baptism then marks the beginning of a new creation story for us, a new moment of putting order out of chaos, a remarkable moment of salvation. His baptism is not only a decisive moment of a confirmation of his identity as Son of God, but it is also an important and indispensable moment for our salvation history. His baptism reminds us that he has not come only to identify with our humanity but also to identify with our fallen nature by going the through the ‘remedy’ of our sinfulness though he has not sinned himself. We see this in his gesture to come to John the Baptist to be baptized. John’s baptism is for repentance, that is, for the forgiveness of sins. Yet Jesus has no sin, so why did he choose to be baptized? It is so because he wants to save us from where we are at. We are sinners. He wants to save us from sins. He couldn’t wait for us to come back to him. He searches us out by identifying with us in our human need of forgiveness and renewal. He has expressed this in his baptism.

The baptism of Jesus is also a moment of grace for us. One of the Early Church Fathers, Hippolytus of Rome has spoken of this great grace of Jesus’ baptism for us. He wrote: ‘If the Lord had yielded to John’s persuasion and had not been baptized, do you realize what great blessings and how many we should have been deprived of? Heaven was closed after then; our homeland on high was inaccessible. Once we had descended into the depths we were incapable of rising again to such lofty heights. The Lord was not only baptized himself; he also renewed our fallen nature and restored to us our status as God’s children. At once the heavens were opened to him. The world we see was reconciled with the world that lies beyond our vision; the angels were filled with joy; earthly disorders were remedied; mysteries were revealed; enemies were made friends.”[3]

So if the baptism of Jesus signals a new moment of creation, then we who are baptized with him and in the name of Christ must also be renewed. This renewal must be part of our New Year’s resolution. And we must try our best to keep it up. Renewal here can also be understood as conversion- which means not only repenting the sins and the wrongs we have done in the past but also going forward and striving to live a good and godly life day by day. Conversion is a daily tasks and responsibility. It is important to note too that we can’t do it on our own. We are not alone in this journey. We need one another. More importantly, we need God. When we are baptized God has called us his children. His Spirit resides in us. This Spirit is our power to go on with our resolution to renewal, to ‘give up everything that does not lead us to God’ as St Paul tells us in our Second Reading today.

So as we continue celebrating the feast of baptism of Jesus, let us thank God for this grace because through baptism we are assured of eternal life. We might falter at times as human as we are we usually say, but we are still God’s children, and this is where our dignity lies. To borrow a line from the song of the late Whitney Houston ‘Greatest Love of All‘ “No matter what they take of [us] they can’t take [our] dignity” as children of God. We have become children of God by virtue of the baptism of Christ and by virtue of our sharing in his baptism. So it is worth rejoicing and worth celebrating.

[1] Mark Link, S.J. Experiencing Jesus: His Story, 96.

[2] Link, 97.

[3] Sermon on the Holy Manifestation 6-9 by St Hippolytus of Rome (Source: Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels)

Birth of John the Baptist 2012

The Church offers us two sets of readings for this feast – one for the vigil, and one for the day itself. I have decided this year to use those prescribed for the vigil simply because they are less familiar to us than the others. In particular you will notice that the gospel stops short of Zechariah’s incredulity and his being struck dumb.

What St Luke does is situate the story at a particular point in history. King Herod is a well-known figure, so the evangelist is telling us that the events he is about to relate really did occur at a precise time. They concern a couple who – if Luke had not written about them – would have been completely forgotten. Both were elderly, and both were worthy in the sight of God, and scrupulously observed all the commandments and observances of the Lord. Good people, then … but they had no children. In ancient Jewish society this was considered a great misfortune, and the two of them – Zechariah and Elizabeth – were to be pitied.

Zechariah was a priest. It seems that his home was not in Jerusalem, but this story concerns a period when his group – his team, if you like – was on duty in the Temple. People did not wander in and out of the Temple sanctuary. Only the priest on duty might enter. Twice a day he would do so and put more incense on the burner so that a sweet smelling smoke rose before the Lord. That smoke represented the prayers of the people. Many of those who had offered sacrifices during the day would be there at this time late in the afternoon. They’d have seen Zechariah go into the sanctuary, and they waited and waited for him to emerge. The fact that he was in the sanctuary for so long would have made them realise that something was happening.

St Luke tells us what it was: an angel, whom we learn later was Gabriel, appeared to him and told him that your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth is to bear you a son and you must name him John. When one of God’s messengers announces the name of a child it’s not because it seems a nice name. The name has a meaning. In this case, the name ‘John’ in Hebrew means ‘The-Lord-is-gracious’. The angel is making it clear to Zechariah that he and his wife are to have a child at last because God has expressly willed it.

Gabriel tells Zechariah that his son will never drink wine or any other strong drink, that even from his mother’s womb, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit and he will bring back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. Then he makes a surprising reference; he says: With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him to turn the hearts of fathers towards their children … preparing for the Lord a people fit for him. You might well wonder what this is all about. Well it is a quotation from the prophet Malachi, perhaps the last book of the Old Testament to be written. Malachi records this promise of the Lord: Know that I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before my day [i.e. Judgement Day] comes, that great and terrible day. He shall turn the hearts of fathers towards their children and the hearts of children towards their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a curse. Remember that Elijah was last seen (in the Second Book of Kings) going towards Heaven in a chariot of fire. Jewish scholars expected him to return to earth towards the end of time to prepare the world for judgement.

For the record let me mention that the Jansenists, members of a heretical movement prominent especially in the French Church in the 17^th and 18^th centuries were convinced that the world was going to the dogs; it was in such a bad state that the end time must be nigh; so they were looking out for the return of Elijah. During my research in France last year I was surprised to learn that there were a few people around in France at the end of the 19^th century who held the same views. I was still more surprised a few days later to learn that to this very day there are a few people left who are still expecting Elijah to return. I have yet to learn how they reconcile their expectation with Jesus’ own words in St Matthew’s gospel. You will remember that, after the Transfiguration, the disciples asked Jesus: Why do the scribes say, then, that Elijah has to come first? Jesus replied: True, Elijah is to come to see that everything is once more as it should be; however, I tell you that Elijah has already come and they did not recognise him but treated him as they pleased … The disciples understood that he had been speaking of John the Baptist.

So this gospel passage is making it clear from the outset that the child to be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth will have a special mission from God. He will have a preaching mission; he is to be a prophet. The task of a prophet is to speak God’s word to his people. It is not necessarily a matter of conveying new information; it is often a message recalling the terms of the alliance and warning of the consequences of non-compliance. To help us understand this role, the Church has given us as our first reading today Jeremiah’s account of his own vocation. He says God told him: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you; I have appointed you as prophet to the nations. Jeremiah gulped and felt very uneasy: Ah, Lord: look, I do not know how to speak. I am a child. God wasn’t having any of that and replied: Do not say “I am a child”. Go now to those to whom I send you and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them for I am with you to protect you – it is the Lord who speaks. And that was that. The words of a prophet are not always welcomed by those to whom they are addressed. This was certainly true in Jeremiah’s case; he suffered a lot for speaking God’s word to the leaders of Israel. And of course John the Baptist was to lose his head for being faithful to his mission. Need I add that none of us can expect to have an untroubled path through life? All of us will experience a measure of suffering which may not be in opposition to our faith, but which may well put our faith in God’s love to the test.

The other reading we have heard today was taken from the first letter of St Peter. In it he gives a very positive account of the role of the prophets in general, and indeed the role of so much of the Old Testament, in forming our Christian faith. Most of those writings point in some way towards the coming of a Saviour and his work for our redemption. He writes: You did not see Jesus Christ, yet you love him; and still without seeing him, you are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe; and you are sure of the end to which your faith looks forward, that is, the salvation of your souls.

In this Year of Grace it will be appropriate for us to reflect on the role of the many prophets God sent into the world to prepare the way of the Lord. John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets and – we might add – the first of the New. Thank the Lord for him. [Q.Howard]

23-06-2012

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