The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to reflect on the beginnings of the action of God to call all nations to Him.
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| Building the Church |
This is resonant with the week of prayer for Christian Unity. The reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah declares the Servant of the Lord brings God’s salvation to the ends of the earth.
* [49:6] The servant’s vocation extends beyond the restoration of Israel in order to bring the knowledge of Israel’s God to the rest of the earth; cf. Lk 2:32.1
Psalm 40 proclaims all who trust God will experience protection.
* [Psalm 40] A thanksgiving (Ps 40:2–13) has been combined with a lament (Ps 40:14–17) that appears also in Ps 70. The psalmist describes the rescue in spatial terms—being raised up from the swampy underworld to firm earth where one can praise God (Ps 40:2–4). All who trust God will experience like protection (Ps 40:5–6)! The Psalm stipulates the precise mode of thanksgiving: not animal sacrifice but open and enthusiastic proclamation of the salvation just experienced (Ps 40:7–11). A prayer for protection concludes (Ps 40:12–17).2
The Salutation of Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians extends Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
* [1:1] Called…by the will of God: Paul’s mission and the church’s existence are grounded in God’s initiative. God’s call, grace, and fidelity are central ideas in this introduction, emphasized by repetition and wordplays in the Greek.3
In the Gospel of John, the Lamb of God is witnessed in John the Baptist’s Testimony.
* [1:32] Like a dove: a symbol of the new creation (Gn 8:8) or the community of Israel (Hos 11:11). Remain: the first use of a favorite verb in John, emphasizing the permanency of the relationship between Father and Son (as here) and between the Son and the Christian. Jesus is the permanent bearer of the Spirit.4
Steve Scholer comments it has been said that by our own baptism we became missionary disciples of Christ and as such we need to be personally involved and actively engaged in living a faith-filled life, participating in a Christian community of faith and love.
We might ask ourselves if, as engaged Christians, we are role models for our children. Do we worship together as a family and nurture our children to develop a strong faith? The same questions can be extended beyond our homes and families, to those with whom we interact in our workplaces and communities; do we present ourselves as engaged Christians and serve as role models?
I dare say all of us have come up short in answer to these questions, but do not despair, for our God is a loving and forgiving God. Equally as important, through our baptism, the gift of the Holy Spirit dwells within us. Through the Holy Spirit, God is personal to each of us and has the power to transform us into the people we want to be.5
Don Schwager quotes “John points to Jesus' saving mission,” by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD).
"No longer does John need to 'prepare the way,' since the one for whom the preparation was being made is right there before his eyes... But now he who of old was dimly pictured, the very Lamb, the spotless Sacrifice, is led to the slaughter for all, that he might drive away the sin of the world, that he might overturn the destroyer of the earth, that dying for all he might annihilate death, that he might undo the curse that is upon us... For one Lamb died for all (2 Corinthians 5:14), saving the whole flock on earth to God the Father, one for all, that he might subject all to God." (excerpt from the COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 2.1)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 1:29-34 prays the phrase from the Gospel and the Mass; “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
Not just your sin, but the sin of every single person on earth, past, present, and future. No one is beyond his reach. No one is devoid of hope. Everyone can know forgiveness and freedom. Even the people you are struggling to forgive. Behold him, and believe that he can bring reconciliation and healing to all people.
Behold, the Lamb of God! And receive him with joy and an open heart.7
Today's second reading comes from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, biblical scholar Nicholas King SJ uses this letter to demonstrate that even the early Christians struggled to live as a united Church. The words that challenged the Christians of Corinth continue to challenge modern Christians. How does Paul present his solution to the problem of Christian disunity?
Count also the number of passive verbs in these verses: ‘to those who have been made holy’ (verse 2), ‘called to be saints’ (2); ‘the grace of God that has been given to you’ (4); ‘you have been enriched in him’ (5) (and here Paul adds ‘in all rhetoric and all gnosis’, two qualities on which those Corinthian Christians particularly prided themselves); ‘as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened in you’ (6); ‘so that you are not deprived of any free gift (7); ‘he will strengthen you so that you can’t be reproached on the Day of Our Lord Jesus’ (8). The Corinthians may have been a bit puzzled at the idea that anyone might be reproaching them on that Day, because they thought that they had got it all right. When Christians start to think in that way, watch out, for there is trouble ahead.[2]8
Friar Jude Winkler positions the passage from Isaiah as a servant song that declares a light to all the nations Greek culture had difficulty with the humanity of Jesus. Friar Jude shares the word play on lamb that presents Jesus as servant.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, In addition to Jesus’ own practice of prayerful solitude, we also have the lives and teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Starting with Anthony the Great in 270 CE, thousands of Christians moved to the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to form alternative Christian communities. These brave souls were on fire with love for Jesus and sought to become more like him through a disciplined rhythm of life and prayer. The desert mystics focused much more on the how than the what, which is very different from Christianity’s primary emphasis on beliefs and doctrines in recent centuries. The desert tradition offers a rich teaching of surrender, through contemplation, to the wonderful and always too-much mystery of God.
Above all, the desert mystics’ primary quest was for God, for Love; everything else was secondary. Thomas Merton (1915–1968) helped modern Christianity recover an awareness of contemplative practice, in part inspired by his reading of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Merton wrote: “All through the Verba Seniorum [Latin for Words of the Elders] we find a repeated insistence on the primacy of love over everything else in the spiritual life: over knowledge, gnosis, asceticism, contemplation, solitude, prayer. Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions. The more lofty they are, the more dangerous the illusion.” [1] 9
Focus on the Love of Jesus and our mission to extend that Love to others is the common ground upon which Christians gather as one.
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