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Dear Friend, All of us have moments
of doubts, moments of nagging uncertainty and questioning. These doubts can
be about ourselves and our actions, about our friends about our near and dear
ones and even about our God and his love for us. Sometimes these doubts are casual
but at other times these doubts can be profound, shaking our very
foundations. Sometimes we voice our doubts at other times we let them remain
within, upsetting our very being. How can we resolve our doubts? Can we bring
them all to Jesus? Have a reassuring weekend trusting in Him. Fr. Jude Botelho |
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The Exodus was deeply engrained on the memory of
Israel. The Israelites surrounded my misery and despair long for a new
exodus. For Isaiah in particular, the judgement of God, the destruction of
the wicked, and of joy for the afflicted, the sick and the poor ones, reveals
itself as a new Exodus towards Zion. In the first reading the prophet Isaiah
uses the image of a desert, made fertile by rain, to portray the confident
hope that God would restore his people crushed by misfortune. The most
crippling disabilities –blindness, deafness, and lameness –will be relieved
when God sends salvation to his people. Isaiah appeals to the people: “Have
courage! Do not be unafraid!” The second reading from
James talks of the Second Coming of Jesus. He urges the kind of patience and
hope farmers show in waiting for the harvest, and which the prophets of old
showed as they waited for the promises to be fulfilled. It is a patience that
does not lose hope, no matter how hard the situation; a patience that is
strong and yet at the same time gentle. It is a patience that is not passive
but active. It is a patience that manifests quiet, every day sort of
strength. In the meanwhile we cry out with today’s response psalm: “Lord come
and save us!” Practicing Patience There is a story of a man who prayed
earnestly for grace to overcome his besetting sin of impatience. A little
later he missed the train by half a minute and spent half an hour stamping up
and down the platform in furious vexation. Five minutes before the next train
came in he suddenly realized that there had been an answer to his prayer. He
had been given an hour to practice the virtue of patience, he had missed the
opportunity and wasted the hour. In today’s reading of Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist has his
doubts about the identity of Jesus and so we hear him questioning Jesus
through his disciples. “Are you the Messiah, the one who is to come?” John’s
situation was a grim one as he was locked up in a dark dungeon with the
threat of death hanging over him. His faith was being seriously tested. He
needed reassurance and comforting. John had been preparing the people for the
coming of the Messiah. John’s idea of the Messiah was that of a stern, uncompromising
judge. But Jesus was not living up to that image, instead he was acting like
a savior. His radiant friendliness contrasted sharply with the severity of
John. John was an ascetic, who lived
apart from the people, Jesus on the other hand freely mixed with people and
ate and drank with sinners. John prophesized judgement, while Jesus
prophesized salvation. John was confused and wanted to know for sure, so he
sent two of his disciples to question Jesus, “Are you the one who is to
come?” Jesus might have replied with a straight forward yes, but that would
have got him into trouble with the authorities. Neither could he deny that he
was the Messiah, for that would be lying. Instead, he chose to point out the
answer through his actions. His actions were exactly the kind Isaiah had
predicted for the Messianic times. Jesus was happy to let his actions speak
for themselves. Dying in Darkness The great astronomer, Galileo, was born near Florence, in the year
1564. He confirmed what Copernicus had said, namely, that the earth goes
round the sun, and not vice versa. His discoveries greatly enlarged our
knowledge of the universe. Yet he spent his last years in darkness. When
summoned before the inquisition he wrote: ‘Alas, poor Galileo, your devoted
servant, totally and incurably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this
universe, which by my observations and demonstrations, I have enlarged a thousand
fold beyond their previous limits, are now shriveled for me into such a
narrow compass as is filled by my own bodily sensations.’ –Galileo reminds us
of John the Baptist. Like Galileo he ushered in a new age –the age of Jesus.
And like Galileo he died in darkness. Flor McCarthy in ‘New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies’ "Today we find John the Baptist shut in a prison – full of
shadows and forebodings. The Messiah whom he believed he recognized does not
behave like a sovereign judge. Nor does he act as the unrelenting executor of
God’s judgement against sinners. Confused and helpless, John sends to Jesus
to enquire: “Are you really the Messiah whom we await – you who are
non-violent, forbearing and forgiving? This question echoes down the
centuries and challenges us today more than ever, faced as we are with God’s
silence and passivity before our own dechristianized society. We expect
answers from the gospel, but instead the gospel seems to pose us further
questions! Where we expected to find ready-made solutions, we find instead an
invitation to formulate our own. We expect to find miracles only to find the
gospel following nature’s process of slow germination. We find it difficult
to admit that Christianity is a matter of liberty and love –hence a matter of
faith and risk. Like John, we need to enter into our spirit and recognize the
real face of God in the countenance of Jesus Christ –the humble and merciful
deliverer.” - Glenstal Sunday Missal In the second part of the gospel Jesus speaks about John the
Baptist praising him as the greatest of the prophets. Jesus paid handsome
tributes to John calling him a strong personality and a unbending man of
principles. John did not go in for showmanship and did not live a life of
comfort and ease. He was single minded in his purpose and devoted his life
totally to his mission, which was to prepare the way for Jesus. When his task
was done, he moved aside to make way for Jesus. That took greatness. John’s lifestyle
as well as his personal integrity, lent credence to his words. He was a
living example of what he preached. We can draw inspiration from John’s life.
Despite extolling John to the heavens Jesus said that the least in the
kingdom of God was greater than John. Why? Because John, great though he was,
did not fully comprehend Jesus. John preached a God of divine retribution;
Jesus preached a God of divine love. John had his doubts and was confused as
to the identity of Jesus. “Are you the one who is to come, the Messiah?” was
the question troubling him as he lay in the darkness of his dungeon. Faithful witness to the truth Henry David Thoreau was an American who authored the
renowned essay ‘Civil Disobedience’. He championed the freedom of the
individual over the law of the land. He distinguished between ‘law’ and
‘right’. He wrote: “What the majority passes is the ‘law’ and what the
individual conscience sees is the ‘right’, and what matters most is the
‘right’ not the ‘law’.” Once Thoreau was imprisoned for a night for his
refusal to pay poll-tax as a protest against the government’s support of
slavery and its unjust war against Mexico presumably in support of slave
trade intentions. When he was arrested, he hoped that some of his friends
would follow his example and fill the jails, and in this way persuade the
government to change its stance on the issue of slavery. In this he was
disappointed. Not only did his friends not join him, one friend paid the tax
on his behalf and got him released the very next day. When he was in the
prison Emerson, another American writer came to visit him. He said to
Thoreau: “Thoreau, why are you inside?” And Thoreau replied, “Emerson,
Emerson, why are you outside?” Thoreau was a great lover of the truth. He
suffered because he spoke the truth and stood for the truth. Emerson said in
his obituary of Thoreau, “He was a great speaker and actor of truth.” –John
the Baptist too spoke and stood for the truth against the king and paid for
it by sacrificing his life. John Rose in ‘John’s Sunday Homilies’ Key Question Some critics acclaim Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the greatest
play of the modern world. In this tragedy Hamlet is the prince of Denmark who
learns from his father’s ghost that he was murdered by his own brother
Claudius, so that Claudius could take his place as king and marry Hamlet’s
mother. Intent on avenging his father’s assassination, Hamlet ponders what he
should do in a soliloquy: ‘To be or not to be: that’s the question. Whether
‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?’
Hamlet’s perplexing question has become a Shakespearean classic. Scripture
too poses some key questions about the mysteries of life, and today’s gospel
gives us a good example. John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus to ask
the question: “Are you the one who is to come, or do we look for another?”
This is by no means a casual question of identity, but a critical question
whose answer affects our entire destiny. As such it is a timeless question, a
contemporary question, an ultimate question. Albert Cylwicki in ‘His Word Resounds’ May our moments of doubt lead
us to a deeper trust in God! Fr. Jude
Botelho |
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Other Sunday Homily Websites Daily Reflections Immaculate Heart Retreat Center Gospel Commentary from Ireland Daily Scripture |
Recent
Sunday Reflections Second Sunday of Advent 09-Dec. 2007 First Sunday of Advent 02-Dec. 2007 Thirty-Fourth Sunday of the Year 25-Nov. 2007 Thirty-Third Sunday of the Year 18-Nov. 2007 Thirty-Second Sunday of the Year 11-Nov. 2007 Thirty-First
Sunday of the Year 04-Nov. 2007 Thirtieth
Sunday of the Year 28-Oct. 2007
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