(26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)
In the first reading today we hear the interesting account of the spirit of prophecy being given to the seventy elders of Israel. As we heard, two of these elders missed the prayer gathering, but even though they were absent the spirit of prophecy descended on them as well. As it was then, so it is now—there are always people who begrudge God for his generosity, and when Eldad and Medad are seen prophesying without having shown up for the service or whatever it was, Joshua entreats Moses to put a stop to it. So Moses, in rebuke, utters one of his greatest lines in the Sacred Scriptures: “Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets! Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!” The only Christian rock act I have ever been able to abide, a wacky garage band called the Knights of the New Crusade, sometimes ends songs or sets with this cry, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!”
There is a little irony here; perhaps he doesn’t know it, but Moses is proclaiming the principal prophetic word of the passage. ‘Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets! Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!” The good news for us is that in Jesus Christ, God has indeed bestowed his spirit on all of his people and made us into prophets. Recall for a moment the scene of Jesus’ baptism, and how in every version we are told of the Holy Spirit that descended upon him at that moment. Now just as God took some of the spirit that was on Moses and gave it to the seventy elders, so by our baptism into the death and Resurrection of Christ, God has taken some that Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus and given it to each of us. The Holy Spirit is given to each baptized Christian, is nourished by our sharing in the Holy Eucharist, and sealed and strengthened in each of us in the sacrament of Confirmation.
This is a big deal. As individuals and as the universal Church of Jesus Christ, we are the fulfillment of Moses’ cry, ‘Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets! Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!’ We have been given a prophetic vocation, that is, the call to be those who speak the Truth in the world.
You only have to take a brief look at our society to see how confused and vague we have become about the Truth. In college I was taught that there was no such thing as the Truth of human life, but only ‘truths in life’ that one might find for oneself. This is the grave situation of relativism which our Holy Father Benedict has warned us about so many times. We can see the rotten fruit of a world in which is there is no right and wrong—only ‘right for me’—all around us, and this is why it is so important for us to embrace our prophetic vocation as those who are called to tell the Truth. We who are baptized are given the privilege, joy, and duty of sharing in the ministry of Christ the Prophet. Maybe we don’t always think of ourselves as prophets, but that’s what we are. And the role of a prophet is to tell the Truth.
This is a big deal, and it is important to God. Through Jesus Christ, God has placed his prophetic Spirit on us, that we ourselves might be the truth-telling presence of Christ in the world. This matters so much, that, as we heard in the gospel, if someone should interfere with one of Jesus’ little ones becoming this kind of disciple, it would be better for him to be drowned in the sea. And for ourselves, our vocation as those who have become prophets for the sake of the world is so precious that anything at all within us that keeps us from it is to be cut off and thrown away.
Showing posts with label Numbers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Numbers. Show all posts
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
His Descent Is Our Ascent
(Exaltation of the Holy Cross)
Today we celebrate a contradiction, a paradox. Indeed, it’s the contradiction and paradox which is at the heart of our faith, at the heart of Christianity. It’s right there in the title of the solemnity we celebrate today: The Exaltation of the Cross. We exalt the Cross, meaning that we lift it high and make the Cross of Christ something we look up to. But what is this Cross which we exalt? It is one of the cruelest and humiliating means of execution known to the ancient world. It’s a sign of us human beings at our worst, at our least human, at our most evil.
So what does it mean to say that we exalt, that we lift up and venerate this sign of ourselves at our worst? Let us attend to the Sacred Scriptures we hear today. As Paul says in the great hymn of the letter to the Philippians, the Son of God, the Eternal Word, “emptied himself” of all that it should mean to be God, and “took the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.” In Jesus Christ we see God descending, letting go of all divine prerogative, and entering into the deepest and most horrible consequences of sin—the violence of us human beings torturing, humiliating, and killing one another.
This is the meaning of the Cross: God identifying with us in the pain and torment we have brought upon ourselves with our sins, even to the point of feeling ourselves alienated from God altogether: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Behold the Cross and see God himself taking on the suffering that we earn for ourselves with our sins and violence against one another. This is an almost indescribable love and kindness, that the all-powerful God should empty himself and take on the burdens of our faults. But that’s the overwhelming Love we call God, a Love that is literally just dying to save us from ourselves.
The good news is that this descent of God becomes our ascent out of the prison of selfishness and sin and into the new life of grace. Just as the Israelites were able to look up to the serpent in the desert and be healed, so we, if we turn our gaze to the Cross, God will reveal to us the path to new life.
That’s the secret. We have to look up to the descent of God. For God descends into our suffering and pain in order to rob it of its power from the inside. Jesus Christ, though he was able to die in the humanity he borrowed from us, could never die in his divine nature. And so he bursts forth from death, taking his transformed humanity with him, into the New Life we call the Resurrection.
Let us look up the humility of God, for God’s humiliation is our exaltation. Let us turn the gaze of our hearts and minds upward to the Cross of Christ, for the descent of God is the ascent of our humanity into freedom from violence and sin.
Today we celebrate a contradiction, a paradox. Indeed, it’s the contradiction and paradox which is at the heart of our faith, at the heart of Christianity. It’s right there in the title of the solemnity we celebrate today: The Exaltation of the Cross. We exalt the Cross, meaning that we lift it high and make the Cross of Christ something we look up to. But what is this Cross which we exalt? It is one of the cruelest and humiliating means of execution known to the ancient world. It’s a sign of us human beings at our worst, at our least human, at our most evil.
So what does it mean to say that we exalt, that we lift up and venerate this sign of ourselves at our worst? Let us attend to the Sacred Scriptures we hear today. As Paul says in the great hymn of the letter to the Philippians, the Son of God, the Eternal Word, “emptied himself” of all that it should mean to be God, and “took the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.” In Jesus Christ we see God descending, letting go of all divine prerogative, and entering into the deepest and most horrible consequences of sin—the violence of us human beings torturing, humiliating, and killing one another.
This is the meaning of the Cross: God identifying with us in the pain and torment we have brought upon ourselves with our sins, even to the point of feeling ourselves alienated from God altogether: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Behold the Cross and see God himself taking on the suffering that we earn for ourselves with our sins and violence against one another. This is an almost indescribable love and kindness, that the all-powerful God should empty himself and take on the burdens of our faults. But that’s the overwhelming Love we call God, a Love that is literally just dying to save us from ourselves.
The good news is that this descent of God becomes our ascent out of the prison of selfishness and sin and into the new life of grace. Just as the Israelites were able to look up to the serpent in the desert and be healed, so we, if we turn our gaze to the Cross, God will reveal to us the path to new life.
That’s the secret. We have to look up to the descent of God. For God descends into our suffering and pain in order to rob it of its power from the inside. Jesus Christ, though he was able to die in the humanity he borrowed from us, could never die in his divine nature. And so he bursts forth from death, taking his transformed humanity with him, into the New Life we call the Resurrection.
Let us look up the humility of God, for God’s humiliation is our exaltation. Let us turn the gaze of our hearts and minds upward to the Cross of Christ, for the descent of God is the ascent of our humanity into freedom from violence and sin.
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