Everything Has
Become New
Twenty-Fifth Week of Year II Thursday September 22, 2016
(Begin reading Ecclesiastes)
The Responsorial Psalm pinpoints hope: “In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge” (Psalm 90).
Ecclesiastes 1:
2-11
bears witness to a common perception of life on this earth: “There is nothing
new under the sun.” The Sumerian religion that preceded Judaism thought human
life here below mirrored the unchanging cycle of the stars, which revealed the
divine life and will. When God intervened in history and chose Abraham, he
broke the cycle. Something new was afoot.[1]
Jesus
transformed everything. With Christianity “there
is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”[2]
Jesus
came to establish a new covenant, to
give the new life of the Spirit;
creating new wineskins to hold new wine; a new garment to receive a new
patch; making us a new dough to
be unleavened bread purified of the old yeast.
Baptism
makes us a new creation, everything has become new. We are one new
humanity in place of the old division into Jews and Gentiles. We have
received a new birth into a living
hope. We are a new self with a new name, speaking new tongues.
We
are being renewed in knowledge by a new teaching with authority, so that
everyone trained for the kingdom of heaven draws from a treasure of what is new and what is old. We have received
a new commandment. We are taught to
follow a new and living way. We wait
for new heavens and a new earth, the new Jerusalem that comes down from God
out of heaven; where we will sing a new
song. God says, “See, I am making all things new.”
No
wonder we are committed to work for change in society! We are consecrated by
Baptism stewards of the kingship of
Christ to exercise leadership in making “all things new.”
In Luke
9: 7-9, when Herod heard “about all that was being done by Jesus” he sensed
something new was taking place. “People were saying that John had risen from
the dead,” and he too saw Jesus as more than a prophet (see Matthew 14:2). In his superstitious fear
he had an inkling of the truth: that the Church
can only be explained as Jesus risen, animating and empowering his body on
earth. In us Christ himself is making “all things new.”
Initiative: Be Christ’s steward. Shine a new light on
everything you touch.
[1] See Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews.
[2]
References to all the following citations are given here in alphabetical order:
1Corinthians 5:7; 11:25; 2Corinthians
3:6; 5:17; 1John 2:8; 1Peter 1:3; 2Peter
3:13, 14:3; Acts 2:13; 17:19.; Colossians
3:10; Ephesians 2:15; Galatians 6:15; Hebrews
8: 8, 13; 9:15; 10:20; 12:24; John 13:34; Luke
5:36-39; 22:20; Mark 1:27; 2:22; 14:25; 16:17;
Matthew 9:17; 13:52;
26:29; Revelation 2:17; 3:1,12; 5:9; 21:1-2, 5; Romans
7:6.
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