Second Sunday of the Year Is 49:3, 5-6; 1 Cor 1:1-3; Jn 1:29-34 (year a)
As the memory of Christmas begins to fade, the liturgical readings focus our thoughts on the meaning and purpose of Christ’s birth. More than this, they invite us to reflect on the meaning of our own lives.
It is in Christ alone that our sometimes aimless lives find their sure direction. Our reflection begins with the prophecy of Isaiah, spoken to a people at the point of oblivion. Hope was rekindled with the prophecy of a future messiah, a humble servant, chosen from the womb to become God’s servant. The salvation that he would bring would reach beyond the narrow compass of his own people. It would embrace the whole world.
“It is not enough for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel. I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
These words were fulfilled in Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection. They continue to be fulfilled in the people he has called to be his own. In Christ, both individually and collectively, we also become a people honoured in the eyes of the Father who formed us in the womb to become his people, to gather all nations into his kingdom of peace and healing.
We hear the words, but rarely allow them to change the fixed attitudes that underpin our understanding of ourselves. Our true meaning lies not in the accident of our birth, or in the complex achievements and failures of our lives. It is to be found in the Father’s gracious love, embracing us in Christ from the womb, promising God’s own strength to our struggling humanity.
St Paul had clearly understood this when he described himself as called from the womb to be the servant of the Good News. What he had understood of himself, he applied to all God’s people.
“Before the world was made, he chose us in Christ to live through love in his presence.”
John the Baptist had acknowledged the same in pointing to Jesus as the Lamb of God, endowed with the Spirit, and sharing that same Spirit with all who would be baptised in his name.
Let us begin this new year by entrusting our resolutions to the power of that same Spirit given to us. Then we shall be changed.
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