THE THREE WITNESSES IN US

FRIDAY AFTER EPIPHANY SUNDAY

1 Jn 5:5-13; Ps 147:12-15,19-20; Lk 5:12-16

The Witnesses of our Healing

Saint John uses the world in his first letter to represent all who live in falsehood because they lack the truth of God. The same falsehood makes the people in the world fall under the grip of the devil called the father of lies. They live in bondage by believing and living a life of falsehood; they propagate the kingdom of evil and darkness. We were once in that kingdom because of our thoughts and manner of life before we professed faith in Jesus Christ. Saint Paul says we were then under the rulership of forces of evil and powers of darkness. But our profession of faith in the Incarnation of the Word of God has set us free from that kingdom. The liberating power of the mystery is what John writes about in today’s reading. “Who can overcome the world? Only the man who believes that Jesus is the Son of God: Jesus Christ who came by water and blood, not with water only, but with water and blood; with the Spirit as another witness.” As explained in the two previous reflections, our belief and acceptance of the mystery of the Incarnation enables us to conceive our true selves in God. To believe that the Infant born of Mary is the Eternal Son of God is to have an immediate grasp of the depth of God’s love for us men, which made him send his only Begotten Son to be our salvation.

The belief in the divinity of the Son born as man for us is the witness of the water. The consequence of believing in the reality of his human life is that he died; this is the witness of the blood. Because the sentence of mortality hangs over every human life, the water and blood bear united witness. If he did not die, then our faith in his humanity would have been standing on one leg. But to believe in the death of the Son of Man completes our faith in his Incarnation and makes it stand on two legs. The adoption and salvation that come from faith is what we receive from the Holy Spirit, who regenerates our spiritual self by his presence in us. The Holy Spirit completes the testimonies of the water and the blood by his regeneration of a spiritual self for the believer. The results of the testimonies of the water and the blood in each believer are repentance from sins and death of the old self, conceived in sin. The Holy Spirit will not generate the new man without this repentance and death of the old self. The three form a complete witness according to John: “so that there are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and all three agree.” the Church celebrates these three united witnesses in the three Sacraments of initiation into the Christian life: Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation.

Each of these Sacraments expresses an important aspect of our Christian life. By the united testimonies of the three witnesses, which commence with our faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, we overcome the world and the ruling forces of evil and sin. We are better begotten of God as we repent daily of our sins by which we offended God, die to our old man or self by rejecting the world and its allurements, and live a new spiritual life in communion with the Holy Spirit who makes his home in us. The encounter between our Lord Jesus Christ and the leper in the Gospel illustrates our need for regeneration. “Jesus was in one of the towns when a man appeared, covered with leprosy. Seeing Jesus, he fell on his face and implored him. ‘Sir,’ he said ‘if you want to, you can cure me.’ Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said, of course I want to! Be cured!’ And the leprosy left him at once.” As the leper needed healing, which made him recognise the divine power of Jesus Christ, every one of us needs the light of life, which draws us to Jesus Christ, the Light from God who entered the world by taking our nature. His entrance into our nature is a demonstration of his willingness to heal us of our blindness and spiritual death due to sin. Anyone who believes has eternal life in him. Saint John testifies to this: “Everybody who believes in the Son of God has this testimony inside him.”

Let us pray: Grant, we ask, almighty God, that the Nativity of the Saviour of the world, made known by the guidance of a star, may be revealed ever more fully to our minds. 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.