20210903 CHRIST IS ALL SUFFICIENT
03 September, 2021, Friday, 22nd Week, Ordinary Time
First reading |
Colossians 1:15-20 © |
All things were created through Christ and for Christ
Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen God
and the first-born of all creation,
for in him were created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers –
all things were created through him and for him.
Before anything was created, he existed,
and he holds all things in unity.
Now the Church is his body,
he is its head.
As he is the Beginning,
he was first to be born from the dead,
so that he should be first in every way;
because God wanted all perfection
to be found in him
and all things to be reconciled through him and for him,
everything in heaven and everything on earth,
when he made peace
by his death on the cross.
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 99(100):2-5 © |
Come before the Lord, singing for joy.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before him, singing for joy.
Come before the Lord, singing for joy.
Know that he, the Lord, is God.
He made us, we belong to him,
we are his people, the sheep of his flock.
Come before the Lord, singing for joy.
Go within his gates, giving thanks.
Enter his courts with songs of praise.
Give thanks to him and bless his name.
Come before the Lord, singing for joy.
Indeed, how good is the Lord,
eternal his merciful love.
He is faithful from age to age.
Come before the Lord, singing for joy.
Gospel Acclamation | cf.Ps18:9 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Your words gladden the heart, O Lord,
they give light to the eyes.
Alleluia!
Or: | Jn8:12 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
I am the light of the world, says the Lord;
anyone who follows me will have the light of life.
Alleluia!
Gospel | Luke 5:33-39 © |
When the bridegroom is taken from them, then they will fast
The Pharisees and the scribes said to Jesus, ‘John’s disciples are always fasting and saying prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees too, but yours go on eating and drinking.’ Jesus replied, ‘Surely you cannot make the bridegroom’s attendants fast while the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come, the time for the bridegroom to be taken away from them; that will be the time when they will fast.’
He also told them this parable, ‘No one tears a piece from a new cloak to put it on an old cloak; if he does, not only will he have torn the new one, but the piece taken from the new will not match the old.
‘And nobody puts new wine into old skins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and then run out, and the skins will be lost. No; new wine must be put into fresh skins. And nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. “The old is good” he says.’
CHRIST IS ALL SUFFICIENT
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [Col 1:15-20; Ps 100:2-5; Lk 5:33-39 ]
There are two main challenges facing the Church today, ad intra and ad extra. The first concerns the question of change and adaptation of the gospel to the modern world and its demands. The second, the danger of syncretism in the light of the attempt to foster inter-religious unity and the influence of the New Age Movement. Both are ultimately a challenge to the purity of faith in Christ. Do we compromise for the sake of unity and risk confusion, or should we be faithful to orthodoxy and risk alienation?
The gospel today reflects the situation in the life of the early Church. There was the tension between retaining the practices of Judaism and the Gentiles who were converted to Christianity, and were seeking to shed the customs of Judaism. St Mark and St Luke, writing for the Gentiles, were clear that the Christians need not adopt the religious practices of Judaism. A case in point is the question of fasting, which the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees practiced. This ancient practice of fasting was a form of worship, connected with the Day of Atonement. (Lev 16: 29,31) Fasting was also an act of penitence. In the case of Jesus, He did not seem to have high regard for such ascetic practices. What were the reasons for Him to dispense His disciples from following such practices of piety?
Firstly, He changed the perspective of fasting. One fasts not so much to gain merit from the merciful God but rather when God is absent in our life. Although the Old Testament speaks of Israel as the bride of God, nowhere does it mention the Messiah as the bridegroom. Jesus hinted that He was the bridegroom which would be rejected by them. Only then would it be the time to fast. When Jesus dies on the cross, we will be called to reflect on the meaning of His suffering and death for us. This explains why the Church insists that all Catholics must fast and spend time uniting ourselves with Christ’s death on the cross on Good Friday.
Secondly, Jesus wanted to underscore that His presence is also the arrival of the new order of God inviting us to a new way of life;one that transcends a mere obedience to the laws, much less an external observance, but faith in His love for us. Through the forgiveness of sins we are brought into union with God in the Spirit. Salvation is no longer through observance of the laws but faith in Him as the Son of God who delivers us from the bondage of sin and death. The commandments of God are kept as the expression of our love for Him who loves us first.
Thirdly, the new way to God cannot be reconciled with the old way. There is no question of syncretism. The examples He gave was that of the seamstress. It would be a mistake to take a new piece of cloth and patch it to an old garment. In the first place, the new cloth will tear the old when it shrunken; and secondly, there will be a mismatch. In the end both the new and old cloth will be ruined. So, too, the new way of salvation wrought by Christ cannot be mixed with the old way of Judaism. It requires new approaches. To accentuate this incompatibility between the old and new way of salvation, Jesus gave the analogy of the new wine and the old wineskins. The fermenting of the new wine will burst the old hardened wineskins. The consequence is both the wine and the skin would be lost. Hence, “new wine must be put into fresh skins.”
Unfortunately, the truth is that “Nobody who has been drinking old wine wants the new. ‘The old is good’ he says.” Indeed, not many are ready to change. We are all creatures of habit. We are traditionalists. But then we have the radicals who want change. How does the Church accommodate such extreme positions? In trying to blend the old and new dispensation, the Church causes confusion on one hand, and dissatisfaction on another. What is necessary for us is to ensure that growth and development in the Church must always be seen to be in continuity with the old. Any development cannot be something that is alien to its roots. The New Testament does not contradict the Old Testament but Christianity is the fulfilment of the Old Testament.
The key to resolve the tension is whether we believe that Christ is all sufficient for our salvation. If Christ is totally adequate for our salvation, then our focus must be on Christ alone. For the other spectrum of confusion today is to think that Christ is not sufficient, but then we need to be complemented by other religions. This was the challenge of the Christians in Colossae. Gnosticism was corrupting the purity of the faith of the Christians by claiming that Christ was insufficient to save them. This was because Christ was not God but just one of the emanations between the world and God. Christ was not a man either, because matter for the Gnostics was considered evil. Only the spirit is good. So the humanity of Jesus was just a mask, as taught by the Docetists. Christ had no real body. Creation was also opposed to God. Salvation is not through Christ’s forgiveness of sins even if He were the highest in a series of emanations, but over and above, they need to acquire special divine knowledge and secret passwords to attain salvation.
In response to such Gnostic interpretation of Christ, St Paul underscored that “Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen God.” As image, Christ not only represents God but because He is identical with Him, that image becomes the perfect manifestation of God. As He told Philip, “To see me is to see the Father.” (Jn 14:9) In the Old Testament, wisdom is also said to be the image of God. (Wisd 7:26) Among the Greeks, they believed that it was the Logos or Reason of God that created and sustained the world. Otherwise, one cannot explain the order of the universe. In saying that Jesus is the image of God, therefore, St Paul is saying He is the fulfilment of the Wisdom of the Old Testament and the Logos of the Greeks, and therefore He is the Word of God. St John captures this by saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (Jn 1:1f, 14)
But to call Christ the image of the invisible God, we are also reminded of our calling because in Genesis we are told that we are created in His image and likeness. (Gn 1:26f) But because of sin, we have lost that likeness. We are created to be the image of God and that is our calling. We are called to be children of God. Christ is the first-born in the sense that He holds the highest honour in creation. Jesus is therefore not just the perfect manifestation of God but also of man. In Him, we understand who we are and what we are called to be.
As the first-born of all creation, Christ is the one through whom God created the world. He is not just one among the intermediaries but all things were created through Him. And not only through Him but for Him as well. Christ is not just the agent of creation but the goal of creation where we are all called to arrive by attaining full maturity in the stature of Christ. (Eph 4:14) But this is possible only when Christ “holds all things in unity”, that is to say, He is also the sustainer of creation. He sustains by being the head of the Church, which is His body. As head, He directs His body to work in union with Him “because God wanted all perfection to be found in him and all things to be reconciled through him and for him.”
In the light of Christ’s sufficiency, Christians do not look towards other religions to find direction and salvation. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. (Jn 14:6) Any attempt at syncretism, especially in incorporating the esoteric mystical philosophy of the New Age Movement, would compromise our purity of faith in Christ and confuse our beliefs. The message of today is clear: Christ is all sufficient. There must be no compromise and adulteration of our faith in Christ. This is because Christ, by His death and resurrection, vindicates our faith in Him as the Son of God and our saviour. We will share in His resurrection.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment