Readings may be found at https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091524.cfm:
Who are the people who “light up our life?” They are the people we are always happy to see – no matter the occasion, no matter what state they find us in -happy, sad, distracted, whatever. They are the people who bring us comfort, joy, hope, and those whom we readily, freely affirm, and who, in turn, affirm us. These are the people who engage us in LIFE – its joys and sorrows, goals and dreams and disappointments. These are the people who are REAL.
In his book ON THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, Pope Saint John Paul II wrote that “the search for God and the search for ‘self’ is one and the same search.” So, to answer the question who Jesus is, we do well to begin with ourselves.
Who first introduced us to “the Light?” Who brought us to life? Might as well start with our parents – everyone has them, even if they were not the ones to nurture us after birth. But today I am thinking of a most nurturing mother and father, or any caretaker caressing an infant, engaging in a baby’s smiles, the coos. There is not just joy here, but anxieties, too, but not without hope that all will be well, and that this new life will prosper. In all of this, faith offers comfort in this wonderful quote from the prophet Jeremiah 29:11 on behalf of God: “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you—oracle of the Lord—plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope.”
Keep that quote in mind as we follow our parents or guardians sending us off to school for the first time—feelings of excitement, yes, but also fear, and sadness mixed with longing, acknowledging the passage of time, the deep realities of change. That’s what they felt, and likely, that’s what we felt, too.
Life engages us time and time again and again in all the human realties of thought, and feeling. Our first days of school (thinking of the highs and lows starting Kindergarten!) and later, when we were off to junior high, high school, college. Did he get any easier? One experience building upon another- sometimes “yes,” sometimes “no.” And then, for all the love we may have experienced from those who Light Up Our Life, still, the securities and the insecurities we encounter completing job applications, dating, announcing our engagements or entrance into the priesthood. Love we experience from others could have, can still, if we let us, root us in a deep acceptance of life’s realities, of who we are, who we are not, of successes and failures along the way, of, yes, in religious language, the realities of sin and grace. Faith addresses these realities by acknowledging the Crosses we bear, while knowing that all things will pass. Sorrows can and will be turned to—well, if not always JOY, at least to WISDOM, to greater faith, hope, and, above all, love.
In the powerful Genesis story Adam proclaims one of the great comforts in the Creation, speaking of Eve “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.” This is part of our comfort and hope. Essentially, we are never alone. We are destined for relationship with God and others. Our Trinitarian Faith affirms God is the essence of Being, i.e., God is Relationship itself, and relationship is the Life God calls us to embrace. This is very important in our response to who Jesus is.
The Church reminds us continually that Jesus is bone of our bones, flesh or our flesh, making Him the light of our lives, indeed, the light of the world. He engaged in the joys of life and its pain, enduring the Passion, the Cross. The Resurrected Jesus refers to himself in a similar way when He says to the disciples: “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I Myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see, I have.” Thus, we must examen our relationship with HIM and others because we are extensions of Jesus’ very flesh and bones.
THE CREED SAYS: “and (He) became man.” All was created WITH HIM, THROUGH HIM, AND IN HIM to culminate in His person, in a particular historical, biblical time and place. Jesus comprises all aspects of creation -material, emotional, spiritual, and more because of God’s intentionality, that all came before Him and is retained by Him for Him to be part of this world. However, Jesus’ life on earth was not an end in and of itself, but life with a purpose, to engage in the pattern of dying and rising to inaugurate a transition to something yet to be fulfilled, as the Bible says, into “a new heaven, a new earth,” including a newly defined, ever-perfecting humanity for all. For the Creed states “He rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”:
Here we have the vision on our horizon. In these lines we find both a literal and spiritual acceptance of the value of LIFE, physical, human life, in both joys and sorrows, engaging in the thoughts and feelings of parents, single people, babies, children, adolescents, young adults, mature individuals in every stage reminding us to accept the pattern of Jesus which is the pattern of Creation and everything – life, death, rising, renewal, change, dying and rising. This is LIFE in its fullness, LIGHT for our lives, and the depth meaning of love because, as we acclaim in the Creed: and his kingdom will have no end.
JESUS is the Godman, who is NOT JUST AN IDEA, CONCEPT, A TEACHING, BUT INCARNATE FLESH, transformed yet all too REAL. This is why the church insists on perpetuating eucharist. This is why we come to the table and worship and be thankful, unafraid of the fullness of life, joys, sorrows, all of it. Again, I repeat that thought I began with from Pope Saint John Paul II wrote “the search for God and the search for ‘self’ is one and the same search.” So here is our answer to Jesus:
Who do we say Jesus is today? “Jesus, you are who we are: We are You, and You are Us. We are bone of your bones, flesh of your flesh, ready to die and rise, picking up our crosses not in despair but in hope and perseverance because that is what LIFE is, both LIGHT and Darkness. For where there is Great LIGHT, there is also Shadow, yet all of it, yes all of it is sustained by LOVE. And that is LIFE in its fullness. So, what can we say to Jesus when he asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus, this is our answer, our answer is this: JESUS you are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. Jesus, you are LOVE.
frjamesdiluzio 