1st Thursday of 2020
Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen
1 John 2:22-28 John 1:19-26
As we stand on the threshold of a new year and a new decade it is important that we keep our eyes fixed on Christ. The world, as we know it, is spinning off course and is following chaotic paths leading nowhere. In the frenzy, we are killing one another and defiling our common Mother. Writing to Titus, Saint Paul put it quite simply: “We used to be stupid, disobedient, and foolish, as well as slaves of all sorts of desires and pleasures. We were mean and jealous. We were hateful and hated one another” (Tit 3:3). The Word became Flesh to reveal the radiance of the Father’s glory. Being a man like us and in solidarity with us in everything except sin, he reveals man to himself.
Because the Beloved Son came to seek and find the lost, “we have come to know and to rely on the love that God has for us.” The apostle John continues: “God is love, and those who live in love live in union with God and God lives in union with them” (1JN 4:16). Because God so loves us, we need not be hateful in ourselves. Because we have been forgiven our sins, we can forgive one another. Because Christ has made all things new, we can see the world, as if for the first time. T.S. Eliot said it best: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.”
The Word of God helps us make sense of the gibberish of many words. Christ is the Truth that fulfills the deepest longings of our hearts. The truth of Christ abides in us. He is the same, yesterday, today and for all eternity. His fidelity is the anchor of our souls. The world as we know it is passing away, but it is in the Beloved Son that we live and move and have our being (Cf. Acts 17:28). In Christ, we can begin to see the goodness in us that the Father saw at the beginning of creation. Let us never forget that God made us to bear His holy image and like the Son to allow the Glory of the Father to radiate from our faces. If God put a new heart in us, He will also put a new song on our lips. As the psalmist wrote, “All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.” As we look upon love of God for the world that became incarnate let us allow ourselves to be caught up in his tender embrace.
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