20170106 FAITH IN THE
SON OF GOD IS THE WAY TO SHARE THE LIFE OF GOD
1John
5:5-13
5 Who can overcome
the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
6 He it is who came
by water and blood, Jesus
Christ, not with water alone but with water and blood, and it is the Spirit
that bears witness, for the Spirit
is Truth.
7 So there are three
witnesses,
8 the Spirit, water
and blood; and the three of them coincide.
9 If we accept the
testimony of human witnesses, God's testimony is greater, for this is God's
testimony which he gave about his Son.
10 Whoever believes
in the Son of God
has this testimony within him, and whoever does not believe is making God
a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God
has given about his Son.
12 Whoever has the
Son has life, and whoever has not the Son of God
has not life.
13
I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God
so that you may know that you have eternal life.
Mark
1:6-11
6 John wore a garment
of camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey.
7 In the course of
his preaching he said, 'After me is coming someone who is more powerful than
me, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals.
8 I have baptised you
with water, but he will
baptise you with the Holy Spirit.'
9 It was at this time
that Jesus came from Nazareth
in Galilee
and was baptised in the Jordan
by John.
10 And at once, as he
was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit,
like a dove, descending on him.
11
And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on
you.'
FAITH IN THE SON OF
GOD IS THE WAY TO SHARE THE LIFE OF GOD
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: [1 JOHN 5:5-13; MARK 1:6-11 ]
What is the real purpose of the Word
becoming flesh? Why did God incarnate Himself in Jesus? Only for one
reason: so that we can share in His life! God wants to share the very
life He has with His Son with us, His beloved sons and daughters. This is
His love for us. God became man so that we can see His face and feel His
love concretely in our lives. He knows that we can only encounter Him
through our humanity. Hence, in His mercy He accommodates us by becoming
one of us and with us, except in sin.
How can His incarnation enable us to
share in His divine life? Besides revealing to us the face of God by His
life, passion, death and resurrection, Christ came to give us access to the
divine nature of God. This life is given to us now, principally through
the sacraments of initiation. Often, people say it does not matter
whether we are Christians or not, so long as we believe in God.
Consequently, it does not matter which faith one belongs to. As a
consequence of a lack of appreciation of the importance of the mystery of the
incarnation and what Christ came to do for us, many Catholics lack evangelical
zeal to bring others to Christ. Many are indifferent to evangelization and
some even compromise their faith in Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of
the world in the name of religious harmony and out of deference to the
sensitivities of other religions. To prepare us for the feast of Epiphany,
which is the celebration of the manifestation of Christ as the Saviour of
humanity, the liturgy precisely underscores the importance of believing in the
name of the Son of God so that we can have life.
Indeed, St John
reminds us “God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son; anyone
who has the Son has life, anyone who does not have the Son does not have life.
I have written all this to you so that you who believe in the name of the Son
of God may be sure that you have eternal life.” Christ is the way, the
truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Him,
because only the one who is in the bosom of the Father can reveal Him to us,
only the One who is God Himself can give us a share in the life of God and only
the One who is truly man can lead us to His Father by showing us the way to
overcome sin, living a life of unselfish love towards our fellowmen and
obedience to God. How then does faith in Christ make it possible for us
to share in His divine life?
Through Christ, we come to realize that
our sins are forgiven by the Father and that we are loved. Through Christ
we see how much the Father loves us and always wants to forgive us for our
failings, seventy times seven, which is always! However, this is on
condition that we truly accept His forgiveness in our hearts. This
forgiveness of sins is prophetically dramatized in the baptism of Jesus in the
river Jordan. By allowing Himself to be baptized by John the Baptist, He showed
that He was truly a man, since God does not need any repentance of sins.
Christ has no sins, but by receiving baptism from John, He wants us to realize
that He has carried our sins in His body and therefore He stands in proxy for
the forgiveness of our sins.
Through Christ too, we see the love of
the Father expressed by His death on the cross where He shed His blood for
us. By His death on the cross, He demonstrated the unlimitless love of
the Father for us and at the same time underscored that He had conquered sin,
hatred and death by His refusal to surrender to the fear of death and
unforgiveness of our enemies. He overcame sin by truth, hatred by love
and death by dying. Love and life therefore are the last words, not sin
and death.
Finally, through Christ’s surrender of
His Spirit to the Father upon His death, He made it possible to pour forth this
same Spirit on us all so that we can now appropriate His very life for
ourselves, since His Spirit is given to us to accomplish what He accomplished
in the power of the same Spirit. With that same Spirit, He was raised from
the dead and now lives wholly forever with His Father at His right hand.
Sharing the power of His Father, He bestows and unleashes upon us that Spirit
as well so that we can now share in the divine life of God.
It is within this context that we can
appreciate today’s first reading regarding the elements of water, blood and
Spirit in coming to share in the life of Christ. St John underscores three
realities that are needed to share in the life of God. He wrote, “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.”
These three stages of participating in
the life of God are given to us through the sacraments of initiation. As
Christ is no longer visibly seen by us, He bequeaths to the Church the
sacraments so that we can continue to see and experience what the early
disciples saw, heard and touched. Christ, who is the Sacrament of the
Father, the symbol, sign and reality, entrusts to His Church the sacraments of
baptism, Eucharist and confirmation so that He can continue to impart to us His
forgiveness, love and His Spirit.
Through the sacrament of baptism, which
is symbolized by water, He washes our sins away, frees us from the dominion of
the kingdom of darkness, makes us a new creation, and incorporates us into the
community of grace in the Church, His body. We are made one in Him,
having been reconciled with the Father with all our sins forgiven. The sacrament
of baptism therefore is the means and also our expressed confession in Jesus as
our Lord and Saviour. By immersing ourselves in the water, we are committed to
die to ourselves, our selfishness and our sins so as to rise with Christ.
Through this sacrament too we receive the grace of sanctification and new life
in Christ, sharing in the divine life of God.
Through the sacrament of the Eucharist,
we join Jesus in offering ourselves as a living sacrifice to the world.
The Eucharist is the summit of the Church’s worship because it is both the
sacrifice of Christ and that of His Church, which is His body. Through
our union with Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist and our reception of
the Lord’s own body and blood, we are transformed into Christ and become one
body and one spirit in Him. In this way, the Church becomes more and more
Christ as we are all united into one body. Through Christ, our worship to
the Father is complete and we are united with God through grace.
Finally, through the
giving of the Holy Spirit at baptism when we become the children of God and at
the sacrament of confirmation when we become His witnesses to the world through
the gifts given to us for the building of His Church and for the work of
evangelization, Christ is made known to the whole world. Only through the
Holy Spirit can we be sanctified in Christ and through the same Spirit be
united in love and be filled with the power for mission.
Hence, water, blood
and spirit sum up the Christian life. Any Christian who wants to
share the fullness of the life of God is baptized, confirmed and remains one
with the Church through the celebration and reception of the Eucharist.
The question that remains to be answered
is whether we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Without faith in
Jesus as the Son of God, there can be no question of the efficacy of the
sacraments as the former presupposes faith. Without faith in Christ, the
sacraments would have no effect in our lives, even though in principle, the
sacraments truly mediate the graces implied. But if we lack faith, we are
not receptive of the grace that comes from the sacraments since it is Christ
who gives us the grace.
For this reason, both
the scripture readings assert that Christ’s divinity is not something given only
by human testimony but by God Himself. St John wrote, “we accept the
testimony of human witnesses, but God’s testimony is much greater, and this is
God’s testimony, given as evidence for His Son. Everybody who believes in the
Son of God has this testimony inside him; and anyone who will not believe God
is making God out to be a liar, because he has not trusted the testimony God
has given about his Son.” God has given us His endorsement at the baptism of
Jesus when “no sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens
torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came
from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’” Finally,
God seals His approval on the life and teaching of Jesus by raising Him from
the dead. God is therefore our testimony that all that Jesus did and
taught are true. We can therefore truly confess that Jesus is truly the
Son of God and our Saviour.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights
Reserved
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