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Gospel Reflection 20080120

Keep knocking on God's door.
Like a loving parent, God wants only the best for us. Our prayer should be confident, not timid, knowing that God will answer if we are persistent in our knocking. Let's do the same thing when others knock on our door for help.

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What is God’s plan for your life? Do envy and jealousy lock you into vying for the limelight instead of playing second fiddle?
January 20, 2008

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel
Jn 1:29-34

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 baptizing with water
was that he might be made known to Israel.”
John testified further, saying,
“I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven
and remain upon him.
I did not know him,
but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me,
‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain,
he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’
Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”

A kite was consumed by envy of the eagle. “How come he can fly so high? Everyone admires him and no one admires me.” One day the kite sees a hunter and calls out to him to shoot the eagle. The hunter replies that he would need to add some feathers to his arrow for it to reach the eagle. The kite pulled one of his best feathers and gave it to the hunter. That was not enough to reach the eagle. So the kite pulled another and then another and yet the arrow was not quite able to reach the eagle. Before long all the kite’s best feathers were gone and he was no longer able to fly. The hunter simply turned round and shot the kite as his catch for the day. The moral of the story: envy and jealousy consume the person who harbors them before the person for whom they are harbored.
There is a difference between envy and jealousy. Envy is dissatisfaction with what belongs to us and coveting what belongs to another. We can envy people for their looks, their possessions or their relationships, wishing we could take their place. Jealousy, on the other hand, is the fear that what is ours may be lost to another. Both envy and jealousy rob people of their inner peace as they devise ways to eliminate the person they perceive as standing in the way to their personal fulfillment.
Looking at the way things are in our world today, it would seem that envy and jealousy are normal human traits. But the example of John the Baptist shows us that true personal fulfillment and greatness lies not in how we may compare with others but in how faithful we are to our God-given roles in life.
How many people like to hear that the person who succeeded them is doing better than they did? Nobody. Here John is a rare example. John started the Kingdom of God movement. Jesus succeeded him as leader of the movement after Herod imprisoned John and had him executed. Yet whenever John speaks of Jesus he speaks of Jesus as better than him. He describes Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as only his best man (John 3:29). Notice how he introduces Jesus to his own disciples in today’s gospel:
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me” (John 1:29-30).
As a result of this endorsement, two of his disciples left him and followed Jesus (verse 37). These were the first disciples of Jesus according to John’s Gospel. John summarized his whole attitude to Jesus in one statement: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Why is John so content and satisfied with playing the second fiddle rather than vying with Jesus for the limelight? It is because he knows exactly the reason for him being in the world. He knows why he came into this life: “I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel” (John 1:30). Because he knows why he is here, John can tell when he has done his bit. He can tell when it is time to hand the baton to another. Why did you come into the world? What is God’s plan for your life? If you do not have a personal answer to this question, chances are that you will spend your life chasing after everything and nothing, in a rat-race of envy and jealousy with those you perceive as better than you. Instead of living and working in harmony and cooperation with others, people who do not know the reason for their being are often driven by rivalry and competition.
But look at the flowers in the field. Some are shrubs and some are herbs, some are red and some are white, some are yellow and some are blue; yet all of them are beautiful. The poinsettia, the daffodil, the rose, all are beautiful because they have their different purposes. Even though John felt he was not worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, Jesus did turn round to say of him, “Among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11).
It makes no sense to say, as John the Baptist said, that someone born after him existed before him. The person who would say that is either mad or would mean something that goes beyond the realm of logic. So, either John the Baptist was crazy or he was speaking on a level which surpasses normal thinking. That level beyond the realm of logic is the horizon of faith. It is a horizon opened up for man by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Faith does not limit logic: rather, it opens it up to the way of thinking proper to God, himself the source of all reason and logic. It is those who would have us depend only on what human reason can understand who are limiting the horizons of humanity. From the perspective of faith, then, John pointed to Jesus as the one who “ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.” What is John doing here? He is professing his faith in the divinity of Jesus. For only the divine can exist before being conceived in the womb. All other human persons are created by the divine at the moment of conception. What is more, in pointing out that this man Jesus is the one who existed before him, John is also professing his faith in the incarnation. That divine person who existed before me is here, now, in the flesh: he is Jesus of Nazareth. The Baptist goes further still. He does not just affirm that Jesus is God made man, he also explains why Jesus has come; he predicts the future of Jesus. He says: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” In other words, the mission of Jesus is to remove from the world the cause of all evil, pain, suffering and death. This divine person made flesh is here as the Savior of the world.

posted by Mike Young @ 9:14 AM