20150102 ACKNOWLEDGING JESUS AS THE SON OF GOD, SON OF THE ETERNAL
FATHER
Readings at Mass
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First reading
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1 John 2:22-28 ©
|
The man who denies
that Jesus is the Christ –
he is the liar,
he is Antichrist;
and he is denying the
Father as well as the Son,
because no one who
has the Father can deny the Son,
and to acknowledge
the Son is to have the Father as well.
Keep alive in
yourselves what you were taught in the beginning:
as long as what you
were taught in the beginning is alive in you,
you will live in the
Son
and in the Father;
and what is promised
to you by his own promise
is eternal life.
This is all that I am
writing to you about the people who are trying to lead you astray.
But you have not lost
the anointing that he gave you,
and you do not need
anyone to teach you;
the anointing he gave
teaches you everything;
you are anointed with
truth, not with a lie,
and as it has taught
you, so you must stay in him.
Live in Christ, then,
my children,
so that if he
appears, we may have full confidence,
and not turn from him
in shame
at his coming.
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Psalm
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Psalm 97:1-4 ©
|
All the ends of
the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Sing a new song to
the Lord
for he
has worked wonders.
His right hand and
his holy arm
have
brought salvation.
All the ends of
the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
The Lord has made
known his salvation;
has shown
his justice to the nations.
He has remembered his
truth and love
for the
house of Israel.
All the ends of
the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
All the ends of the
earth have seen
the
salvation of our God.
Shout to the Lord,
all the earth,
ring out
your joy.
All the ends of
the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
|
Gospel Acclamation
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Jn1:14,12
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The Word became
flesh, and dwelt among us.
To all who received
him he gave power to become children of God.
Alleluia!
|
Or
|
Heb1:1-2
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Alleluia, alleluia!
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.
Alleluia!
|
Or
|
|
Alleluia, alleluia!
A hallowed day has
dawned upon us.
Come, you nations,
worship the Lord,
for today a great
light has shone down upon the earth.
Alleluia!
|
Gospel
|
John 1:19-28 ©
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This is how John
appeared as a witness. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to
ask him, ‘Who are you?’ he not only declared, but he declared quite openly, ‘I
am not the Christ.’ ‘Well then,’ they asked ‘are you Elijah?’ ‘I am not’ he
said. ‘Are you the Prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ So they said to him, ‘Who are
you? We must take back an answer to those who sent us. What have you to say
about yourself?’ So John said, ‘I am, as Isaiah prophesied:
a voice that cries in
the wilderness:
Make a straight way
for the Lord.’
Now these men had
been sent by the Pharisees, and they put this further question to him, ‘Why are
you baptising if you are not the Christ, and not Elijah, and not the prophet?’
John replied, ‘I baptise with water; but there stands among you – unknown
to you – the one who is coming after me; and I am not fit to undo his
sandal-strap.’ This happened at Bethany, on the far side of the Jordan, where
John was baptising.
ACKNOWLEDGING
JESUS AS THE SON OF GOD, SON OF THE ETERNAL FATHER
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: 1 JOHN 2:22-28; JOHN 1:19-28
“Who
are you?” This was the question raised by the Jews, the Levites and the
priests to John the Baptist. They thought that John the Baptist was the
Messiah or the prophet Elijah. But John the Baptist refuted such
claims. This same question is posed to us and the Christians during
the time of St John. We are challenged to search the depths of our hearts
and ask Jesus, “Who are you?” Who is Jesus to you? Is He
merely a great man and teacher, a prophet and a holy man of God? The
answer to this critical question will determine our faith and therefore every
aspect of our lives, what we are living for, our purpose, our destiny and our
goal.
Yesterday,
we celebrated the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. Although
this feast is celebrated in honour of Mary, it was theologically meant to
protect our faith in Jesus, who is truly God and truly man. All heresies
in the Church begin with half-truths about the person of Jesus. There are
some who only consider Jesus as a man. Others regard Jesus only as God,
but clothed in a human body. Still, others assume that Jesus is an
admixture or a hybrid between God and Man. If Catholics call Mary the
Mother of God, it is because we want to affirm that Jesus is one person with
two natures; divine and human, distinct yet inseparable, united in Him.
This truth is so important that right from the onset of the Christmas season,
the Church continues to reiterate and expound the doctrine of the Incarnation,
and what it means for God to assume our humanity in the readings prior to and
after Epiphany.
Today,
the liturgy begins by reminding us that Jesus is the Son of the Eternal
Father. The divinity of Jesus must be confessed without
compromise. Jesus is a man but He is also truly God, the only begotten
Son of the Father. No matter how much regard one has for Jesus, if we do
not confess in His divinity as the Second Person of the Trinity, our confession
of faith falls short of the full identity of Jesus. If we Christians
celebrate Christmas, it is because we see Jesus as the Light of God that has
come into the world. But lest we fall into Gnosticism which teaches that
we are all emanations of the One Divine Reality and that we are divine sparks
imprisoned in our bodies, St John in no uncertain terms proclaims Jesus as the
Light, that is God Himself. Accordingly, we confess in the creed, “I
believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the
Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from
true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all
things were made.”
Hence,
we can appreciate why St John was utterly adamant that we maintain this truth
if we were to find fullness of life. “Whoever denies that Jesus is the
Christ. Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist. No
one who denies the Son has the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the
Father as well.” If we do not confess in our hearts that Jesus is
the Son of the Father, then our faith in God as Father would not be complete or
true, since there can be no knowledge of the Father without the Son who reveals
Him to us. Only Christ who comes from the bosom of the Father can
reveal to us who His Father is. In other words, we can never
truly say that God is Father, unless we have seen the Son who is the reflection
and the incarnation of the Father’s love and truth. To know that God
is Father therefore presupposes that we know Jesus is the Son of the Eternal
Father. Hence, St John wrote, “Let what you heard from the beginning
remain in you, and then you will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this
is the promise that he made us: eternal life.”
To know that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of the living God, is salvation because we can then follow the
psalmist in declaring, “All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of
God.” We can declare this because in Jesus, we see God taking the
initiative to save us. In Jesus, we see the power of God at work in our lives,
especially through His life, miracles and teachings; and most of all through
His passion, death and resurrection. Jesus who is God reveals to us the
true nature of God, and more than just revealing to us our source of life, our
creator and Father, He comes to give us eternal life by giving us His Holy
Spirit so that we too are brought into the life of God that He shares with His
Father.
This Spirit is given to
us provided we are in union with Jesus whom the Father will send in His name. To share in the
Spirit of the Father and the Son is what will enable us to surmount all
challenges in life. It is the same Spirit that made the Incarnation
possible, the same Spirit that empowered Jesus in His earthly ministry, the
same Spirit that strengthened Jesus in His passion and the same Spirit that
raised Him from the dead. So too, with that same Spirit, we will be able
to do likewise. This was what John the Baptist was hinting at when the
Pharisees asked him, “Why then do you baptize with water if you are not the
Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet?” The reply of St John the Baptist was, “I
baptize you with water but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
Indeed, St John the Baptist would also say that Jesus would be the one who
would baptize us in the Holy Spirit, not just with water which is only for
cleansing and for the forgiveness of sins.
It is this realization
that God loves us so much in Christ, who emptied Himself by surrendering His divinity to assume our
humanity even unto death, that inspires us to do likewise; to give not just
only material gifts to others but ourselves in imitation of the love of God
made present in Jesus. We too are now invited to share in the life of
God through a self-emptying like the Father who emptied Himself of His Son and
the Son who emptied Himself of His divinity, sharing our humanity and even
stooping to be treated as a criminal, stripped, scourged and crucified
unjustly. By so doing, He conquered sin and death. This gives us
great hope for we know that if as a man, Jesus could overcome sin using His
human will with all the limitations of what it means to be a human, we too
through Him and in Him, will also be able to conquer sin and death through His
Spirit given to us.
The giving of gifts or
ourselves at Christmas however is not an end in itself. It is to draw people to
experience the love of God and to know Him in Jesus. Many people in the
world are seeking true happiness in life. But they do not know God,
because God for them is not real. Unlike the psalmist, they have not seen
the saving power of God. They cannot sing a new song to the Lord for they
have not seen the wondrous deeds that God has done for them through His mighty
hand. That is why we, who have seen the Father through Jesus, through
whom we have experienced the saving power of God and come to know that our
victory is achieved not by our hard work but by His right hand and holy arm
alone, are now called to proclaim Christ as the Light of the World. Like John
the Baptist, we are called to be heralds for Christ. We are to
prepare the way for the Lord, for others to come to know who Jesus truly is in
their lives. We are called to reveal to them that “there is one among you
whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I
am not worthy to untie.” Only when they have come to know that Jesus is
more than a man but truly God the Son, can they find true salvation. For
to know Jesus is to know the Father.
As Christians who believe
that Christ is the revelation of the Father’s love, let us follow John the
Baptist by being His precursor today. Let whoever we meet today see
Jesus in us. Because Jesus is our Saviour, we must lead others to
recognize Him for themselves as we have done, in all things we do or say.
In this way, the world can joyfully proclaim, “The Lord has made his salvation
known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. He has
remembered his kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel.”
We must never forget, in the
process of making Jesus known, that we do not usurp his rightful place.
Like John the Baptist, we must remember that we are only the fleeting voice,
not the Eternal Word, at best the morning star at dawn but not the Sun of
Justice. We must not over-shadow Christ. He must increase and we
must decrease. This is particularly important for those active in
Church ministry; that in our leadership in Church and in our service, we must
always be on guard against pride, lest we get carried away by the attention
that people give us. If what we do does not lead people to love the Lord
more but lead them to love us more instead, then we are not doing what John the
Baptist did; to let the Lord increase and allow himself to decrease.
Let us pray that we will
not be the anti-Christ in our lives, by either living a life of counter-witness
through sin and selfishness, or because our pride in proclaiming Jesus lead
people to ourselves rather than to Him. Let us pray that we will remain
humble like John the Baptist who awaited the master. Only by
remaining in union with Jesus through the authentic teachings of the Church and
through prayer can we avoid deceiving ourselves and deceiving others.
Yes, this is the exhortation of St John which we must take to heart, “And now,
children, remain in him, so that if he appears we may have confidence and not
be put to shame by him at his coming.”
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV
WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP
OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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