Image source
Above: Behind the baptismal font at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles is a set of five tapestries, created by John Nava, with a central depiction of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. When you click on the image for a larger version, keep in mind that each of the five tapestry panels is forty seven and a half feet high and seven feet wide.
Below: In this detail from the central tapestry, note how the soles of Jesus' feet evidence his walking barefoot or sandal shod. (Click on the image for a larger version.)
Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Acts 10:34-38
Matthew 3:13-17
Not too long ago, we were singing,Ø It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
everywhere you go!Ø
And now we might find ourselves singing,Ø Why does it STILL look a lot like Christmas,
when to church I go?Ø
Well, we’re still “dressed up” for Christmas
because the church calendar strrrrretches Christmas
up to today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
It’s the Christmas mystery at work here.
The Christmas mystery will not let us stay forever at the manger.
nor is it satisfied with our dropping in on for a visit
with Mary, Joseph and Jesus on Holy Family Sunday two weeks ago,
or revisiting the arrival of the magi last week on Epiphany.
The Christmas mystery is not fulfilled in the Divine Infant
but presses forward to bring the Child to maturity,
In this morning’s gospel, in the waters of the Jordan
stands the full-grown infant of Bethlehem, now a man,
accepting the mantle of work that will be his,
receiving his Father’s blessing
and the Spirit’s strength.
Receiving his Father’s blessing…
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased…
None of us is the Christ,
but each of us, deeper in our hearts and minds
than we can understand or begin to imagine,
each of us longs for and needs
that same blessing upon who we are.
Each of us needs to know, in our heart of hearts,
“I am loved. My very being is pleasing.
Who I am, and all I was made to be, is lovable,
even delightful in the eyes of an other.
I am good.
I was made to love and to be loved,
to give and to receive.
I was made in the likeness of my Maker.
who calls me beloved and who is pleased by my very being."
It is so clear from today’s scripture that Jesus, the Son of God,
because he was so fully human,
was in need of this very blessing,
this blessed assurance of being loved by his Father.
Without this blessing and the Spirit’s strength,
he could not have accepted the work laid upon his shoulders.
All the world’s pain and brokenness and sin,
mine and yours,
comes in some manner
from our not believing, not accepting
that we are loved by God and others.
Ours is an age and a culture
in which so very many people doubt that they are loved,
that they are lovable,
that they are blessed by the delight God takes in them.
Receiving and accepting the Father’s blessing
gives us strength to grow to become the persons God made us to be
and to shoulder the crosses that may come our way.
Apart from that blessing, we trip, falter and stumble on love’s path,
and end up, often, “looking for love in all the wrong places.”
With the assurance of that blessing
which is withheld from no one,
we can grow to live and love as fully and deeply as God intended
and accept the mantle of love's mission in our own lives.
Today’s feast brings us far from the warmth of the manger scene
to the brink of the waters of baptism,
waters in which we are called die with Christ
that we might also rise with him.
This feast calls us to stand in the Jordan with Christ
and hear the Father say to us as he said to his Son,
YOU are my beloved… in YOU I am well pleased…
If you are sitting there right now, thinking,
“Well, maybe for others but not for me…”
listen again and hear what the Father has been saying to you
since the moment you came to be,
You are my beloved… in you I am well pleased…
If you still doubt that voice and its word
then do not doubt the blessed assurance of this table
on which is laid the love for which we hunger:
the blessing of the Eucharist.
For here, at the table of sacrament, the Lord says to each of us,
You are my beloved… in you I am well pleased…
-ConcordPastor
It's a beautiful homily and to most who hear or read it, makes them want to believe so much that God really is
ReplyDeletepleased with them, and God considers them "beloved". But what about the people who appear to us that DON'T please God? People who appear to have no moral conscious and seem not to care who they hurt and whom that affects? It's hard to believe God would be pleased with those who hurt or intentionally murder others. Maybe that's where the "mystery" of God's love comes in?
It's funny, after reading Grace's comments, she poses the same questions on my mind. I can embrace the love of God, and can hold on to the fact that I am capapble of others love and caring.
ReplyDeleteBut there are people in this world who are evil. Who do evil things. Who hurt people...even people they are supposed to love. How can God love them? Especially if there is no remorse? Someone who can throw his 4 children off a bridge...children so young and innocent. How can God love a man who rapes a woman, gets her pregnamt and at 8 months pregnant, murders her and burns her body. How can a father, or others, molest children and make thier lives broken and ravaged by the abuse be forgiven? These are gruesome acts that to me are unforgivable.
Are you saying God forgives all of these people?
Some things are unforgivable, and yet, we are supposed to hand over to God the power to forgive when we can not. If that is the case, why do so many of us try each and every day to live our lives the way Christ would want us to. If we are all forgiven in the end...what does it matter, except to those of us who strive to be truly a child God loves simply because we want to be good people, and we want to treat others the way we want to be treated.
As you can tell I struggle with this issue.
I'd loveyour take on this one Concord Pastor.
God's love is unconditional which is to say that God's love for us does not depend on our goodness, nor is God's love for us nullified by our sin.
ReplyDeleteThat God loves even those who sin does not mean that he loves their sins: he loves the sinners. Parents do this with some frequency: they love a child even when their child hurts them. Some parents even love a child who has hurt them (or others) seriously. The parents do not love the wrong the child has done, they love the child.
No sin is unforgivable. God's mercy is in store for all who call upon the Lord's mercy. The father of the prodigal son was ready to forgive his child long before the child came home. So it is with God. The mercy of God awaits our claiming it.
Human beings may find themselves unable to forgive an offender, but that does not render the person unforgivable. It means the offended party is unable to forgive. I believe that God mercifully understands when persons are harmed by heinous acts. It can be a very good thing for the offended person to commend the offender to God for that is a way of praying for the offender. God never ceases, however, in calling the offended to forgiving the offender. That day may never come, but if the grace to forgive is given us by God we would be obliged to forgive.
Some, although not all heinous acts are the deeds of mentally ill people. Regardless of the severity of an offense, a seriously mentally ill person would not be held culpable by God.
God is not in any way pleased by our sins, much less in the harm our sins inflict on others. That does not mean, however, that God withdraws or witholds his love or fails to see what is beautiful in the son or daughter whom he has created. God can see things in each of his children that others never see.
If I have suggested that "in the end" God forgives everyone, that was not my intention. The Father of Jesus is both a just and merciful God. How God will be just merciful and mercifully just to each of us is something I do not know.
Your explanation of this concordpastor, is truly Christ-like.
ReplyDeleteI hope and pray when I die, God is exactly as you describe and that I can fully understand how he sees beyond the sin, no matter how horrible, and still loves the person. It is such a hard thing to do when you see how such crimes as Regina wrote, can ruin others lives.
I did like your explanation. It is always so difficult to see and feel forgiveness in such horrible things in the world but the hope is there. I do remember telling one of my teen age boys that I did indeed love him terrible, I just didn't particularly like him very much at the time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reminding us about these difficult-to-understand things. I'd like to add that that tapestry would be something I'd like to see if I were to visit Los Angeles- something I haven't done in years.
ReplyDeleteI wish that the Catholic Church could emulate the acceptance and love of God. To offer the body of Christ conditionally - to deny those who live a different lifestyle or who support those who live a different lifestyle... I pray to forgive the Church, to overlook the finite and see the infinite (as Mother Teresa says) When the doors are open to all, then the Church will be loving all of its beloved children.
ReplyDelete