Monday, January 8, 2018

Freedom for excellent and meek witness to Glory

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for the Feast that concludes the Christmas liturgical season, The Baptism of the Lord, offer us contemplation on the combination of glory and humility that participate in Life shaped by our Tradition.

  Throughout Christian tradition, the Suffering Servant poems of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah have been applied to Christ.
* [42:1–4] Servant: three other passages have been popularly called “servant of the Lord” poems: 49:1–7; 50:4–11; 52:13–53:12. Whether the servant is an individual or a collectivity is not clear (e.g., contrast 49:3 with 49:5). More important is the description of the mission of the servant. In the early Church and throughout Christian tradition, these poems have been applied to Christ; cf. Mt 12:18–21.
 The Gospel of Mark declares the role of Jesus to create a new people of God.
* [1:8–9] Through the life-giving baptism with the holy Spirit (Mk 1:8), Jesus will create a new people of God. But first he identifies himself with the people of Israel in submitting to John’s baptism of repentance and in bearing on their behalf the burden of God’s decisive judgment (Mk 1:9; cf. Mk 1:4). As in the desert of Sinai, so here in the wilderness of Judea, Israel’s sonship with God is to be renewed.
Peter Edmonds SJ traces the path through Mark’s Gospel that we will follow over the coming year and asks what will we hear when we listen attentively to the voice of Saint Mark?
We will not hear Mark again until the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus after Christmas. Then we listen to the voice of God, the principal though unseen actor in the Gospel of Mark, telling Jesus that he is his ‘Son, the Beloved’, a further scriptural quotation which echoes Isaiah’s words about the servant of the Lord (Isaiah 42:1) and words of Genesis about Isaac, the son of Abraham (Genesis 22:2). If we want to celebrate Christmas with the mind of Mark, then we make our own the message of these first eleven verses of his gospel. They are the foundation on which the rest of Mark’s Gospel is built.
Maureen McCann Waldron reflects on the glorious proclamation of Jesus as Son of God and suggests that we need to hear what else God is saying in the Gospel.
Sometimes God’s voice is thundering and loud as if to grab our attention.  We, like John the Baptist, often feel unworthy.  How can I be sent by God when I am so unworthy, so flawed and imperfect?  That’s when God thunders to us to hear what else he is saying: We are beloved!  We can’t hear it when our heads are under the water, focused on ourselves and our own sin.  It is only when we come to the surface and listen that we hear the loving voice of God, thundering deep until it reverberates in our hearts.  You are my beloved!  In you, I am well pleased.Despite our lifelong struggle, or because of it, we are beloved by God in a way that has no human logic. We are held close, cherished and beloved by this God who blesses and sends us out into the world.
Friar Jude Winkler surveys the content of the alternate texts for today and notes that one of the songs of the suffering servant expresses the willingness to die to expiate for sins and conquer by meekness. 

Michael of Chasing the Wind discusses God’s amazing wisdom on expiation that leads to glorification of God.
God’s amazing wisdom provides a method of redemption for all eternity. While the blood of one innocent creature can pay for the sins of one guilty person, who can wash away the sins of the entire world? A mere man cannot provide such redemption. The sacrifice must be omnipotent; only God is omnipotent. The sacrifice must be God.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that the Western church has largely lost its foundational belief in divinization, and in the practical order have even denied its possibility. Instead, we were just “sinners in the hands of an angry God” and even “totally depraved.” He notes that it is no wonder humans suffer from such lack of self-esteem today. We haven’t told them the central and foundational Good News! He believes this is the source of a lot of the anger and disillusionment with Christianity today.
Spirituality is primarily about human transformation in this life, not just salvation in a future realm. While Western Christianity lost much of this emphasis, and became rather practical and often superficial, the Eastern church taught theosis or divinization as the very real process of growing in union and likeness with God in this world. [1] This is one of the many losses Christianity experienced in the Great Schism of 1054, when the popes of East and West mutually excommunicated one another. The later Protestant Reformation, while needed, did not reclaim this wisdom and further split the church, each side losing something of value.
  Bishop Robert Barron explores the nature of being fully alive by comparing the freedom of indifference that permeates our culture with the freedom of excellence that brings fulfillment. 
For the freedom of indifference, objective rules, orders, and disciplines are problematic, for they are felt, necessarily, as limitations. But for the second type of freedom, such laws are liberating, for they make the achievement of some great good possible.
Spirituality is primarily about human transformation in this life, not just salvation in a future realm. The meekness of the Suffering Servant is a model for transformation through which the Glory of God is seen as humanity fully alive. 

 References
(n.d.). CHAPTER 42 The Servant of the Lord 1 Here is my servant whom I .... Retrieved January 8, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/isaiah/isaiah42.htm

(n.d.). Mark, chapter 1 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved January 8, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/mark/1
(2009, April 5). The Suffering Servant – Chasing the Wind. Retrieved January 8, 2018, from https://chasingthewind.net/2009/04/05/the-suffering-servant/
(2017, December 30). 2018 Daily Meditations - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved January 8, 2018, from https://cac.org/2018-daily-meditations/

(n.d.). The Glory of God is a Human Being 'Fully Alive' | Word On Fire. Retrieved January 8, 2018, from https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/the-glory-of-god-is-a-human-being-fully-alive/320/
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