January 10, 2017
Tuesday,
Week one, Year I
Hebrews 2:5-12; Psalm 8; Mark 1: 21-28.
The Cost Of Credibility
Before people began to take Christ’s crucifixion
for granted, it raised an objection to what yesterday’s reading said about him:
“If Jesus was so great, why did he die defeated on a cross?” Today’s reading
says God gave Jesus “authority over all creation.” But the author admits: “At
present, it is true, we are not able to see that ‘all things are under him.’”
People say, “If Jesus saved the world, why is it in such bad shape?” If God is
in control, you wouldn’t know it from watching the nightly news!
Hebrews continues:
“But we do see Jesus, who was ‘for a short while made less than the angels, now
crowned with glory and honor’ because he submitted to death.” We “see” Jesus in
glory with the eyes of faith, because we know he rose from the dead and is
“seated at the right hand of the Father.” But why did he have to submit to
death for this?
How could we accept the divine words of Jesus as
a credible guide for human life if Jesus himself didn’t experience human life
as we do? Our experience of life is inseparable from an underlying awareness of
inescapable death. For Jesus to say to us. “I am the Way and the Truth of your
human lives,” he had to show that the Life he shares with us is not
incompatible with the way we experience life on earth, or with the truth that
death adds to all of our perceptions. If it was not possible for him who is our
Life to experience death as we do, then it is not possible for us who die to
experience Life as he does. So Jesus “submitted to death so that by God’s
gracious will his experience of death should benefit all humanity.”[1]
On the ground level of practical living, this
means his words work for us. They are not the lofty theories of someone whose
feet have never touched mud.
It
was fitting that God... in bringing many children to glory, should make the
pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Jesus put his money where his mouth was. There
is no reason not to accept every word that comes out of his mouth as the Way we
need to follow, the Truth we need to learn, the Life that brings our own lives
to fulfillment.[2]
Hebrews is trying to
convince us that we should “turn our minds more attentively than before to what
we have been taught, so that we do not drift away.” If people at Mass would
listen “more attentively” to the readings during the Liturgy of the Word — and to all the words of Mass — fewer would
“drift away” from the Church.
God did give his Son “authority over all creation. The letter continues: “For if the message declared through angels was valid, and
every transgression... received a just penalty, how can we escape if we neglect
so great a salvation?” A “penalty” is not a punishment, but the natural
consequence of behavior that “misses the mark.” If we don’t use the words of
God to keep ourselves conscious of the Way, the Truth and the Life, we can
expect to follow, consciously or not, the directions, trends, assumptions, and
patterns of behavior most prevalent in our society. That is not the way to
life![3]
Meditation:
1.
How often do I read Scripture?
2.
How often could I if I chose to?
3.
Do I choose to?
4. How am I going to
feel about this the next time I pray?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comments!