PAYING ATTENTION TO JESUS CHRIST


MONDAY, FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Heb 1:1-6; Ps 97:1-2,6-7,9; Mk 1:14-20

Learning what We must Do from Christ

Jesus Christ is now born in mystery, which we celebrated in his baptism yesterday, and the Father’s declaration that the Son of Man is his beloved Son is a direct presentation of him for our imitation. The Father’s testimony is given to us to instruct us on what we must do to have eternal life or be well pleasing to him. To say that the Father gave Jesus Christ to us in mystery as his beloved Son is to say that all that Jesus Christ will say or do are divine truths that are deeper than the human mind; we cannot understand them ordinarily, but we must believe them because they are revelations of the Father’s will. Mysteries are divine truths that are beyond the comprehension of unaided human minds. Thus, the Father’s voice strengthened our faith in the divinity of the Son of Man, given to our human experience by his Incarnation, whose origin is in God the Father. In this sense, the Son of Man embodies the mysteries of our salvation. Our first religious obligation is to pay attention to him and learn the Father’s will for our eternal salvation.

We offend God the Father seriously if we have not started paying the required attention to Jesus Christ. To encourage us to do this, the author of the letter to the Hebrews writes of the definitive speech of the Father to us in Jesus Christ. “At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is.” God the Father did not just speak to us in our weak human nature and expect us to imitate his Son’s life of holiness; by the same Word he directed to us, he removed our hindrances and strengthened us to be able to follow his Son’s life in his human nature. These are the effects of the three witnesses: water, blood, and the Spirit, which constitute the Sacraments of Christian Initiation into the spiritual life of the Church. The water, aided by our faith in his Son’s humanity and the Spirit, effectively ends our old life and initiates a new life in us; the blood, aided with our faith in his death for us and the Spirit cleanses us of our sins and make us a pure habitation for the Holy Spirit; the Spirit, aided by our faith in his resurrection and ascension achieves our adoption as sons of God.

The Son of Man, spoken to us by the Father as his holy will, can accomplish all these in us because of his sameness of divine nature with the Father. Hence, we read: “He is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature, sustaining the universe by his powerful command; and now that he has destroyed the defilement of sin, he has gone to take his place in heaven at the right hand of divine Majesty.” The truth about his divine nature enables him to complete the second aspect of these mysteries, their perpetual presence and efficacy within the Church. The Sacraments are, therefore, accessible only through faith in the divine reality which they represent. So, the speech of God to us, through his Son made Man for us, is heard by faith, and their salvific effects are harnessed only by faith. The proclamation of Jesus Christ in the Gospel means this. “After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the Good News from God. ‘The time has come’ he said ‘and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.’” The time he means is not temporal, but the time for our salvation; the Good News is the speech of the Father revealing his will for our salvation; and the kingdom of God is constituted here and now by the divine presence provided by these mysteries and their Sacraments, which are doors through which we enter the kingdom.

Let us pray: Attend to the pleas of your people with heavenly care, O Lord, we pray, that they may see what must be done and gain strength to do what they have seen. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

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