Sunday Reflections

When I moved from St. Joseph Church in Hamilton to Resurrection Manor in Waterloo over a year ago, I was shocked at how much stuff I had accumulated. Most of it was junk that could be thrown away or recycled but occasionally there were some treasures — at least to me.  One of them was a laminated plaque from the old altar cards that sat on the altar before Vatican II. It was the Latin version of the prologue of John’s gospel which used to be read at the end of every Mass.  “In principio erat Verbum,” in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Referring to that line, one of my seminary professors said that we were like children who were afraid of the darkness and had pulled the covers over our heads and Jesus came and crawled under the covers and said, “Don’t be afraid, it’s okay to come out, I am with you.” Remember we call Jesus ‘Emmanuel’ a name that means ‘God-with-us.’

The second reading from Hebrews this Sunday says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Jesus came into this world as a helpless infant.  He threw himself into the arena of our humanity and committed himself to walk the walk that we all have to go through.  Last week at the St. Jerome’s University Annual Dinner, Notre Dame Sr. Marie Taylor was honored.  Sr. Marie will be celebrating her 101^st birthday this year. In her acceptance speech, she quoted Mark Twain who said, “There are two important days in your life: the day you were born, and the day you figure out why.” Then Sr. Marie quoted the second question of the Baltimore Catechism: “Why did God make you?” And the answer is: To know, love, and serve God and be happy with him in the next life.  There you have it.

Loving and serving God means — as Jesus tells the apostles — to be able to drink deeply from the cup of life that each of us has been given.  So often when we pray, we have the image of us sitting in a church pew or our La-Z-Boy at home and sending prayers up to God somewhere, out of sight, in heaven.  God up there receives our prayers at his heavenly desk and decides either to write us back and grant our request, or ignore them, or put them in the trash bin.  Our readings, however, paint a different picture of God.  God is not up there but right here.  He knows what we are going through because he has gone through it before us even to the point of death.  We are not alone.  The great baptismal hymn from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians reminds us that in Jesus, the Word made flesh, God emptied himself and became one of us — fully and completely.

Jesus tells us that we were made to continue his mission of solidarity, to be fully with the people and the world that God has given us, and to serve rather than be served.  So, the challenge has been laid down.  We know why we were made. We know our purpose.  Let us ask God for the grace to live it out fully in the life we have been given.