ENDING THE DIVISION WITHIN AND WITHOUT


OUR LADY, QUEEN AND PATRONESS OF NIGERIA

Isa 11:1-10; Ps 72:1-2,7-8,12-13,17; Eph 2:13-18; Mt 2: 13-15,19-23

Ending the division within and without

The Church in Nigeria celebrates the solemnity of Our Lady Queen and Patroness of Nigeria. We invoke the mother of Jesus Christ with this title to implore her intercession in our dire situation in Nigeria. We ask her to pray for us that God may rescue our country, which is sinking deeper and deeper into sin and corruption. The reading from Isaiah is about the promise of the Messiah for all nations. The prophecy of Isaiah about the Messiah who shall come from the tribe of Judah and the Son of David holds for all countries. “A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots: on him the spirit of the Lord rests, a spirit of wisdom and insight, a spirit of counsel and power, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” This prophecy came to fulfilment at the coming of Jesus Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The coming of the Messiah opens the eternal way of salvation for every tribe and language. This universal dimension of the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ is given in the prophecy as follows. “That day, the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples. It will be sought out by the nations and its home will be glorious.” We are among the countries that must seek salvation from the shoot springing from the root of Jesse for us to rise in the glory of his salvation.

There is no other way to receive this salvation that our Lord Jesus Christ has eternally wrought for everyone without a personal search for him. People make up a country; the country is not saved or lifted from sin and corruption as a people. But individuals who make up the country are saved. So, if persons fail to receive salvation through an encounter with Jesus Christ, the Messiah, then the country is not saved. The prophecy guarantees safety only on the holy mountain of the Lord. The holy mountain of the Lord is the locus of God’s revelation, which refers to the humanity of Jesus Christ through whom the Father has definitively spoken to us. Only in Jesus Christ has the knowledge of God filled the country as the waters swell the sea. “They do no hurt, no harm, on all my holy mountain, for the country is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters swell the sea.” The insecurity in every part of our country is already an indication that the churches that litter every nook and cranny of our country do not translate to the knowledge of God nor salvation from sin and corruption. Genuine conversion to Jesus Christ is lacking in our practice of religion. As St. Paul testifies in the second reading from Ephesians, when we are in Christ, there will be no more divisions among us, and peace will be possible when division is removed from within each person by a genuine conversion. “In Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ.”

Jesus Christ is the peace within each person and the peace between all peoples. The inner division sin caused within us must be healed before the outer division, its symptom, can heal. If we fail to attain a love of God through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus, we cannot have a genuine love of self and our neighbour in God. We must die to this corrupted self to enter the mystery of Jesus Christ. If we fail to do this, our Christianity would be a self-seeking that propagates the structure of sin and division everywhere. As was the case with Herod, the religion of self is inimical to Jesus Christ and true Christianity. “Get up, take the child and his mother with you, and escape into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him.” True Christianity is always in hiding wherever the self is reigning in place of God. Hence, we pray today, and through October, to implore the intercession of Mary, the mother of Jesus and our mother, to help us end the reign of sin and division in each of us, our families, communities, and country. We pray for the grace to enter into the days of Jesus Christ when justice shall flourish and fullness of peace forever.

Let us pray: Grant, Lord God, that we, your servants, may rejoice in unfailing health of mind and body, and, through the glorious intercession of Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, may we be set free from present sorrow and come to enjoy eternal happiness. 

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