20150105 MANIFESTING CHRIST BY LIVING THE INCARNATION OF GOD IN
OUR LIVES
Readings at Mass
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First reading
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1 John 3:22-4:6 ©
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Whatever we ask God,
we shall receive,
because we keep his
commandments
and live the kind of
life that he wants.
His commandments are
these:
that we believe in
the name of his Son Jesus Christ
and that we love one
another
as he told us to.
Whoever keeps his
commandments
lives in God and God
lives in him.
We know that he lives
in us
by the Spirit that he
has given us.
It is not every
spirit, my dear people, that you can trust;
test them, to see if
they come from God,
there are many false
prophets, now, in the world.
You can tell the
spirits that come from God by this:
every spirit which
acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh
is from God;
but any spirit which
will not say this of Jesus
is not from God,
but is the spirit of
Antichrist,
whose coming you were
warned about.
Well, now he is here,
in the world.
Children,
you have already
overcome these false prophets,
because you are from
God and you have in you
one who is greater
than anyone in this world;
as for them, they are
of the world,
and so they speak the
language of the world
and the world listens
to them.
But we are children
of God,
and those who know
God listen to us;
those who are not of
God refuse to listen to us.
This is how we can
tell
the spirit of truth
from the spirit of falsehood.
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Psalm
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Psalm
2:7-8,10-11 ©
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I will give you
the nations for your heritage.
The Lord said to me:
‘You are my Son.
It is I
who have begotten you this day.
Ask and I shall
bequeath you the nations,
put the
ends of the earth in your possession.
I will give you
the nations for your heritage.
Now, O kings,
understand,
take
warning, rulers of the earth;
serve the Lord with
awe
and
trembling, pay him your homage.
I will give you
the nations for your heritage.
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Gospel
Acclamation
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Mt4:16
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The people that lived
in darkness
has seen a great
light;
on those who dwell in
the land and shadow of death
a light has dawned.
Alleluia!
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Or
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cf.Mt4:23
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Jesus proclaimed the
Good News of the kingdom
and cured all kinds
of diseases among the people.
Alleluia!
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Or
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Lk4:17
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The Lord has sent me
to bring the good news to the poor,
to proclaim liberty
to captives.
Alleluia!
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Or
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Lk7:16
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Alleluia, alleluia!
A great prophet has
appeared among us;
God has visited his
people.
Alleluia!
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Or
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cf.1Tim3:16
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Glory to you, O
Christ,
proclaimed to the
pagans;
glory to you, O
Christ,
believed in by the
world.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Matthew
4:12-17,23-25 ©
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Hearing that John had
been arrested, Jesus went back to Galilee, and leaving Nazareth he went and
settled in Capernaum, a lakeside town on the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali.
In this way the prophecy of Isaiah was to be fulfilled:
‘Land of Zebulun!
Land of Naphtali!
Way of the sea on
the far side of Jordan,
Galilee of the
nations!
The people that
lived in darkness has seen a great light;
on those who dwell
in the land and shadow of death
a light has
dawned.’
From that moment
Jesus began his preaching with the message, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is close at hand.’
He
went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the
Good News of the kingdom and curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among
the people. His fame spread throughout Syria, and those who were suffering from
diseases and painful complaints of one kind or another, the possessed,
epileptics, the paralysed, were all brought to him, and he cured them. Large
crowds followed him, coming from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judaea and
Transjordania.
MANIFESTING
CHRIST BY LIVING THE INCARNATION OF GOD IN OUR LIVES
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: 1JN 3:22-4:6; MT 4:12-17. 23-25
Yesterday,
we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany where Jesus was revealed as the Saviour
of humanity in His humanity. In the gospel, we read of the concrete
manifestation of Jesus as Saviour in His mission of proclaiming the Good News
of the Kingdom. The gospel underscores the Christmas message that He
is the fulfillment of the Old Testament as the Light of humanity, the Hope of
those who live in the shadows and Liberator of the oppressed.
What is
significant is that He proclaimed the Good News by preaching the message of
repentance and translating His message of deliverance by healing the sick, regardless
of whether they were “suffering from diseases and painful complaints of
one kind or another, the possessed, epileptics, the paralysed.” The
promise of the closeness of the Kingdom of God was so real for the people that
they followed Him, because in Jesus, they could experience the love and
compassion of God. The Good News was therefore never proclaimed in an abstract
manner. The love of God is not a matter of words but through the
liberating power of God in their lives. It is not enough to believe that
God loves us. We also experience His love in a concrete way, especially
through His healing grace at work in us so that we can proclaim that this God
is a living God.
Indeed,
as St John tells us, we too share in the divine life of Christ, since we have
all been given the Spirit. Rightly so, we are the children of God!
But the question is: are we His children in truth and in fact? How do we
know that we are living out our life in Christ? St John gives us the
criteria for discernment. He said, “Whatever we ask God, we shall
receive, because we keep his commandments and live the kind of life that he
wants. His commandments are these: that we believe in the name of his Son
Jesus Christ and that we love one another as he told us to. Whoever keeps his
commandments lives in God and God lives in him.” Indeed, we know that we
are God’s sons and daughters only when the Spirit of God lives in us, enabling
us to live the same kind of life Jesus lived, which is a life of love.
It is
necessary, therefore, that if we want to prolong the Incarnation of God in
Christ Jesus in the world through us, we must follow Jesus in allowing our
humanity to mediate the love and compassion of God to others. Not
just by talking to them about God and the spiritual life, but it is equally
important that we reach out to their spirits through our humanity by caring,
loving, understanding, feeling with, and for them. God becomes real only
in the history of our lives. Whatever we do or say, do we also proclaim
by our lives that God is near? So near that we can see, feel, touch and
hear Him? Isn’t this what St John wrote, “Something which has existed
since the beginning that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes;
that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life –
this is our subject. That life was made visible: we saw it and we are giving
our testimony, telling you of the eternal life which was with the Father and
has been made visible to us.” (1 Jn 1:1-2)
This
explains why St John purposefully requires us to hold on to the fundamental
Christian faith that Jesus is the Son of the Eternal Father who has come in the
flesh, in contrast to the Antichrist who denies the reality of the
Incarnation of Christ. The rejection of the Incarnation will lead to a
false understanding of a spiritual life that disdains what is of the body and
of the world. To live the fullness of life, we must remember that we are
embodied spirits. We are not angels, but the uniqueness of human beings
is that we are created with both body and spirit.
The
things of this earth are good. The responsorial psalm clearly endorses
the goodness of God’s creation when the psalmist declares, “The Lord said to
me, “You are my Son; this day I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give
you the nations for an inheritance and the ends of the earth for your
possession.” It is only when we make the world our god and worship the
things of this earth instead of being its stewards that we end up being slaves
to our possessions. But when we remember that we are embodied spirits,
that what makes us truly happy are matters concerning the heart and the mind,
the eternal values of life, such as love, integrity and unity, then we would
adopt a spirit of detachment from the world, making use of the gifts of
creation and yet not allowing our happiness to be bound by them. In other
words, we must live in the world but not be of the world.
Let us
therefore use the body and the world in such a way that we mediate love
to each other and as a means for us to experience the love of God in our
lives. At the same time, having proper regard for the world also means
that because we are also spiritual beings, we must never reduce ourselves to
mere flesh or material beings as if the things of this world can ever satisfy
us. As a consequence, because of the temptation to go to either extremes
of rejecting one for the other, we must always exercise proper discernment of
the spirits to see whether they come from God or from ourselves. At all
times, we must pause to pray and meditate, lest in the process of appreciating
the earth’s blessings, we are consumed by them. Taking the advice
from St John, we must constantly be vigilant, keeping watch, discerning the
good from the bad spirits with respect to the ways we make use of God’s creation
for our good. Once again, we are reminded by St Irenaeus, “The glory of
God is found in man fully alive. On the other hand, the Fathers of the
Church always repeat the other truth, namely, that God becomes man so that man
can become God. God is humanized so that man can be divinized. This
is the wonderful exchange between God and man that is celebrated during this
Christmastide. So in all things, let us use our bodies and the blessings
of this world for the greater glory of God.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV
WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP
OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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