2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (19.01.14)
SEEING SOMEONE IN A NEW LIGHT
God’s relationship with each individual is a continuous, personal revelation. It originates with our being made by God in his own image and likeness.
An attribute of our ‘God-likeness’ is the imprint of truth, goodness, wholeness and integrity held, indestructibly, in our soul. We constantly use this holy template to measure and assess whatever our senses present to us as somebody or something unknown. Our holy template can be and is smeared by the debris of daily life, failed relationships (including our communion with God) and uncontested temptation.
One proven location for the restoration of ‘contaminated’ holy templates is a desert – a place of silence, stillness and the absence of distraction! Choosing such a place is easier than exerting the will to stay, once we are there! The Devil also knows his way into deserts – Matthew 4:1-11. John the Baptist prepared for his ministry in the Judean wilderness. With his holy template fully restored, he began to preach. He held, within himself, the attributes that the promised One would manifest but he had no certain knowledge of his outward appearance. Suffice it to say, John believed he would recognise the Christ when he saw Him.
St. John the Baptist helps our understanding this Sunday, the 2nd of the Year:
“John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one of whom I said, ‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’
I did not know him, but the reason why I came baptising with water was that he might be made known to Israel.”(John 1:29)
The Divine disclosure to humans has, like God himself, no beginning or end. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5) Human potentiality became visible on earth when God gave form and life to our first parents. There never has been nor ever will be a microsecond when God is unaware of us, individually. In being aware of us, God is revealing himself to us. Like our disobedient first parents, Adam and Eve, we may attempt to hide from God, but it is to no avail. (Genesis 3:8 “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”)
In God’s sight, we are never ‘the same old, same old’; God is forever creating us anew in his own image and likeness when we reach out to him, no matter how tentatively. Satan seeks to trap us in the deceit that there is no escape from ‘the same old, same old’. Satan sells us artificially constructed ‘newness’ with enormous success – the ‘beauty’ industry, the cosmetic plastic surgery (for non-medical reasons) industry – all at a cost greater than money. He is tricking us into burying our real potential beneath so many false appearances with new clothes and material possessions.
Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 as a satire on human nature. As Swift’s best known full-length work, and a classic of English Literature, the book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gray wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that “It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.” Since then, it has never been out of print. The travesty is that many readers fail to make the connection between Gulliver’s plight and human nature’s state of entrapment by Satan. Both are held prisoner by thousands of finely woven threads of ‘temptation’.
Seeing someone else in a new light is an experience that happens more frequently than seeing ourselves in an authentic new light. Yet the revelation of another’s true self, such as Peter, James and John’s vision of Jesus at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17), should trigger a reflection that challenges us. The ability to see genuine goodness in another tell us that we have both the capacity to recognize and the ability to value goodness per se. Genuine goodness, revealed in men and women, is nature at its most attractive. As Peter said to Jesus on the mountain of the Transfiguration: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” (Matthew 17:4)
Our struggle to escape from the layers of falseness with which evil has cloaked our real self bears comparison with the restoration of a masterpiece. In our case, the restorer is our Creator ever ready and more than willing to wash away the disfiguration clouding his masterpiece, which each of us is. There the comparison ends. Unlike the hidden artwork, we are alive! For the Divine restorer to be able to bring us to life, we have to believe in our Creator. More than that, we have to love our Creator sufficiently to allow him unrestricted access to our deepest self. For it is only there, that we will find the long lost harmony between our real self and our heavenly Father, a harmony that fully accords with our deepest longing.
Such restorative work requires both our constant consent and the constant application of our will to our fulfillment of the Divine Will. Inevitably, this will attract Satan’s most immediate attention. He will test our resolve in every conceivable way for the last thing he wants is for us to see our self as we truly are – made in the image and likeness of God himself. Perhaps Luke’s Gospel (Ch.5) recalling part of Jesus’ ‘restoration’ of Simon Peter is a good place to start:
“Then Jesus sat down (in Simon Peter’s boat) and taught the crowds. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” …. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”
The less travelled road of Sacramental Reconciliation is where the Lord tells us also ‘not be afraid’ and invites us to allow him to effect his masterful revelation of our true self.