20191230
RELATIONSHIP
WITH THE WORLD
30 December,
2019, Monday, 6th Day Within the Octave of Christmas
Readings at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: White.
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First reading
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1 John 2:12-17 ©
|
Observance of the will of God
I am
writing to you, my own children,
whose
sins have already been forgiven through his name;
I am
writing to you, fathers,
who
have come to know the one
who
has existed since the beginning;
I am
writing to you, young men,
who
have already overcome the Evil One;
I
have written to you, children,
because
you already know the Father;
I
have written to you, fathers,
because
you have come to know the one
who
has existed since the beginning;
I
have written to you, young men,
because
you are strong and God’s word has made its home in you,
and
you have overcome the Evil One.
You
must not love this passing world
or
anything that is in the world.
The
love of the Father cannot be
in
any man who loves the world,
because
nothing the world has to offer
– the
sensual body,
the
lustful eye,
pride
in possessions –
could
ever come from the Father
but
only from the world;
and
the world, with all it craves for,
is
coming to an end;
but
anyone who does the will of God
remains
for ever.
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Responsorial
Psalm
|
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Psalm 95(96):7-10 ©
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Let
the heavens rejoice and earth be glad.
Give
the Lord, you families of peoples,
give
the Lord glory and power;
give
the Lord the glory of his name.
Let
the heavens rejoice and earth be glad.
Bring
an offering and enter his courts,
worship
the Lord in his temple.
O
earth, tremble before him.
Let
the heavens rejoice and earth be glad.
Proclaim
to the nations: ‘God is king.’
The
world he made firm in its place;
he
will judge the peoples in fairness.
Let
the heavens rejoice and earth be glad.
|
Gospel
Acclamation
|
Heb1:1-2
|
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
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Luke 2:36-40 ©
|
Anna speaks of the child to all who looked forward to the
deliverance of Jerusalem
There was a
prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was well
on in years. Her days of girlhood over, she had been married for seven years
before becoming a widow. She was now eighty-four years old and never left the
Temple, serving God night and day with fasting and prayer. She came by just at
that moment and began to praise God; and she spoke of the child to all who
looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem.
When
they had done everything the Law of the Lord required, they went back to
Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. Meanwhile the child grew to maturity,
and he was filled with wisdom; and God’s favour was with him.
RELATIONSHIP
WITH THE WORLD
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ 1 John 2:12-17; Ps 96:7-10; Luke 2:36-40]
How should a Christian
relate with the world? How should one live like a disciple of Christ? This is the question that St John
in his letter seeks to deal with.
St John warns us, “You
must not love this passing world or anything that is in the world. The love of the Father cannot be in
any man who loves the world, because nothing the world has to offer…could ever
come from the Father” What does he mean? How can we reconcile with the
fact that St John also wrote in the gospel, “God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the
world, but that the world might be saved through him.” (Jn 3:16f) How can we as Christians do
less than God? Is there a contradiction in what he is saying?
We must therefore begin
by differentiating the different nuances when the words “world and flesh” are used in the scriptures because
according to the context they could have contradictory meanings. Hence,
we need to clarify the nuances of these words, “world and flesh.” In the
first place, the world could simply mean the Cosmos, the universe that God has
created. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him.” (Jn 1:10) In this sense, it is something
positive. But the world could also refer to the people who live in
them. God’s love is directed to the world, meaning, the people and their
response could be either positive or negative. In this instance, the
world refers to human beings. Thirdly, the world refers to those who
chose to rebel against God and reject Him. Such a world is in the power of the
Evil One.
So when St John asks us
to reject the world, he is not saying that the world created by God is evil. On the contrary, with the
Incarnation, Christ has brought the world into Himself. With the
incarnation, God and the world cannot be separated even though both are
distinct. So the world in itself is good and holy. The book of
Genesis repeatedly remarked at the end of each day when God created the world,
“And God saw that it was good.” (cf Gn 1:1-31) So the goodness of this world
must never be doubted. What makes the world evil is not the world itself
but human beings who refuse to be stewards of God’s creation. He wants to
make himself the ‘creator’ with full power over creation, disregarding the laws
and will of God.
This happens when man
makes his decisions without any reference to God and His holy will for
humanity. The
problem the world is facing is not just environmental ecological disaster but
human and moral ecological disasters. The root of all problems is the
disorder in man himself. With the advancement of science and technology,
man has made himself God when making decisions on human life and creation
without considering the will of God for creation and humanity. The
values, the policies and developments of the world are promoted and implemented
without any regard to God’s plan. We can see this happening in the
world when man violates the laws of nature and uses science and technology to
manipulate creation.
This is why the world’s
existence is at stake. But the world is looking for scapegoats.
Political leaders are finding excuses to justify their pragmatic positions. Perhaps so, because they are
elected by the people. At the end of the day, as Bishop Fulton Sheen once
wrote, “A nation always gets the kind of politician it deserves. If a time ever
comes when the religious Jews, Protestants and Catholics ever have to suffer
under a totalitarian state, which would deny to them the right to worship God
according to the light of conscience, it will be because for years they thought
it made no difference what kind of people represented them in Congress, and because
they abandoned the spiritual in the realm of the temporal.” These words
must be rephrased in our context. It will not be so much the right to
worship God but to live a life according to our conscience in the light of the
gospel teaching. It is becoming increasingly difficult to practice one’s
faith and live out one’s values in the world. Although there is
freedom of religion in many countries, ironically, the real World Religion is
secularism. This is the new world order which all believers must
subscribe to and everything is subsumed under. Strangely, whilst they try to
control the established religions, in some places, in the name of freedom, even
Satanism, a more explicit form of atheism that advocates divisive values are
even promoted and tolerated.
Can’t we see that this
is what the world is evolving to be? On the issue of gender, the world denies
that there are two different genders, male and female. They want to
promote transgender, eradicating the obvious physical and biological structure
of a man and a woman. The world denies that marriage is between a
man and a woman but advocates same-sex union and elevates it to the same level
of a marriage between a man and a woman. The link between procreation and
companionship in marriage is eradicated. This not only permits marriage
between two persons of the same sex, it also permits lesbian women to go for
IVF to have babies and gays to have surrogate babies. On the level of the
sacredness of life, whilst the world goes at length to promote the sanctity of
life by abolishing death penalty, it continues to advocate abortion even at
birth, and euthanasia.
How has the world become
worldly? St John traces the causes of worldliness. “The love of the Father cannot be
in any man who loves the world, because nothing the world has to offer – the
sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possessions – could ever come from
the Father but only from the world; and the world, with all it craves for, is
coming to an end.”
Indeed, the first reason
is because of the sensuality of man.
Man wants comfort. This is natural because we are afraid of
pain. We seek pleasure, be it for food, drink, clothing or
accommodation. But we lack discipline and moderation. We have
become slaves to the demands of our body. Whilst many are dying from
hunger and lack of clothing in some parts of the world, many of us are wasting
food.
Secondly, St John says
it is also because of the lustful eyes. We are lustful not just in terms of sexual
laxity but in craving for money, power and possessions. Lust or greed is
the cause of man’s downfall. We never have enough. We want more and
more. We make use of people to satisfy our sexual pleasures rather than
in loving them. This craving for more and more leads to dishonesty, ambition,
greed, power, violence and killing.
Thirdly, the worldliness
that St John warns us is “pride in possessions.” We want to own things not just for
our bodily gratification but also because of pride. We want the world to
think well of us, serve us and be at our beck and call, because we have power,
money and status. We think that power and money can buy us the world
because with wealth and power, we can control people and make them do what we
want. For the sake of money and power, people will sell their soul and
their values.
St John warns us that
all these will lead to our destruction. At the rate the world is going, humanity will
be destroyed before the planet is destroyed. Because of selfishness,
individualism, materialism, self-centeredness, there will be division and
fragmentation in families, in communities, in societies and among
nations. This is because we have allowed the Evil One to overcome
goodness and truth.
This is why, as we
contemplate on Christ’s birth at Christmas, we must, as St John urges us, get
back to the beginning.
We must recover our dignity as God’s sons and daughters by recognizing God as
our Father and that He is our creator. Only then, with faith in Him and
especially in His Son who leads us to His Father, will we be able to find
direction and guidance in life because He is the Way, the Truth and the
Life. Through the power of the Word of God in us, we will be strong
against the temptations of the Evil One.
We must follow the path
of the prophetess, Anna. She lived in the world but was not of the world. Although she had been a widow
for the most part of her life, she did not allow her attachment to the world to
make her miserable or fall into self-pity. On the contrary, we read that
“she was now eighty-four years old and never left the Temple, serving God night
and day with fasting and prayer. She came by just at that moment and began to
praise God; and she spoke of the child to all who looked forward to the
deliverance of Jerusalem.” She was hopeful of the future and she knew who
she was and where she would be upon death. She lived not just for today
but for tomorrow, and always in accordance to God’s will.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All
Rights Reserved
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