“If you wish, you can make me clean.” This ought to be the prayer of all of us, I think. Does God wish to make us clean? Of course. But do we acknowledge his ability to do so? Sometimes we are so saddened by our sins that we feel we are beyond redemption. Our brokenness stares us in the face time and time again and accuses us of being unworthy of the attention of God. But the fact remains: If God wishes, he certainly can make us clean. All we have to do is let him, to believe in his power to do it, and rejoice in his desire to do so.
Month: January 2010
-
Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
Learning to discern the Lord’s voice is a big part of our development as people of God and disciples of the Lord. There are many competing voices out there, and so it takes great discernment to know which of those voices is God himself. The way that we learn this is, of course, through prayer. When we practice often enough, we will gradually find it easier to hear the Lord’s voice, and then tell him, “Here I am, Lord; I have come to do your will.”
-
Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings
Now that the Christmas season has come to its close, it’s time to get down to business. And Jesus does so quickly. John has been arrested, so there is no time like the present to keep the word out there. Just as John preached a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, so Jesus preaches a whole Gospel for the forgiveness of sins. The task for us to is to repent and to believe. As we begin the Ordinary Time of our Church year, we may find in necessary to do some more repenting ourselves so that our belief can be stronger in this coming year.
-
The Baptism of the Lord
What wonderful words we have in today’s Gospel to close out the Christmas season: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”
We have come a long way since December the 25th. Jesus, the Son of God has become the son of Mary, and has sanctified the world by his most merciful coming. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity has taken on flesh and become one like us in all things but sin. He took that flesh as the lowliest of all: as a baby born to a poor young family in the tiniest, poorest region of a small nation.
But during his Epiphany, which we have been celebrating ever since last Sunday, we saw the importance of this Emmanuel, God with us. Magi came from the East to give him symbolic gifts: gold for a king, frankincense for the High Priest, and myrrh for his burial. Today, the Epiphany continues with the second traditional reading of the Epiphany: the Baptism of Jesus. Obviously, Jesus didn’t need to partake of the baptism of John, because it was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But Jesus’ taking part in that baptism manifests himself as One who has come to be with sinners, to take on their sinfulness, and to sanctify those waters of baptism so that they can wipe away our sins.
And here’s a wonderful thing: even though the Christmas season officially ends today, we continue to celebrate it in some ways, all the way up to Candlemas day, February the 2nd. We see that especially this year, because next week, we get the third traditional reading of the Epiphany, the Wedding Feast at Cana, in which Christ is manifested in his ministry, ready or not.
The secret to our celebration of the Epiphany is that we must be ready to accept the manifestation of Jesus in our own lives. We have to let him be our king and priest, accepting his death for our salvation. We have to celebrate our own baptism, which is only significant because Christ has gone through it first, long before us, sanctifying the waters. We have to let him minister to us as he did at the wedding feast, giving us the very best of food and drink, in great abundance, to nourish us into eternal life.
This is the One with whom the Father was well-pleased; he is the One with whom we are in awe. We are moved to silence before our Christ who came most mercifully to sanctify our way to heaven. That silence can only be appropriately broken by the exclamation of the Father: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased!”
-
Wednesday after Epiphany
We still need more light, don’t we? Just like the disciples who don’t yet get who this Jesus is and what he’s about, sometimes we too struggle with that. Jesus was doing amazing things among the disciples and they didn’t yet understand. Jesus is doing amazing things among us and sometimes we don’t get it either. The Epiphany of the Lord, which we continue to celebrate today, continues to shed light on who Jesus is for us and for the world. Today, may we open our eyes to the brightness of his coming.
-
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
Mother Seton is a major figure of the Catholic Church in the United States. Her accomplishments contributed greatly to the growth of Catholicism in this country. She founded the first American religious community for women, the Sisters of Charity. She opened the first American parish school and established the first American Catholic orphanage. All this she did in the span of 46 years while raising her five children.
And she didn’t start out Catholic. She was born to an Episcopalian family and married an Episcopalian, William Seton, bearing five children with him before his untimely death. At 30, Elizabeth was widowed, penniless, with five small children to support.
While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action through family friends. She was drawn to Catholicism because of the Real Presence, devotion to Mary, and the apostolic succession which led back to the original Apostles and to Christ. She converted to Catholicism in 1805, and because of that, many of her family rejected her.
But perseverance was a special aspect of her spirituality. She wrote to her sisters: “Perseverance is a great grace. To go on gaining and advancing every day, we must be resolute, and bear and suffer as our blessed forerunners did. Which of them gained heaven without a struggle?”
It is especially appropriate that we celebrate St. Elizabeth’s feast day during this season of Epiphany. Just as we hear in the Gospel that Christ continued to come and shed more light on the people, so her life radiated with light that led to our Savior. And the light of Christ’s most merciful coming has continued to shine in our Church, through the hard work and intercession of saints like Elizabeth Ann Seton.
You must be logged in to post a comment.