|
|
|
||||||||||
|
Dear Friend, We all are making
plans for Christmas, or have already made plans .for how we are going to
celebrate Christmas. In fact most of our lives we are making plans for the
future. When our plans are upset we get disturbed and try to make things fit
into our plans. We want to be in charge of our lives and have control over
what life has in store for us. God has a wonderful plan for making our lives
happy but his plan reveals itself slowly in the events of daily life. Can we
fit into His plan instead of wanting Him to fit in our plan? Often it implies
going out of our way to accommodate others and God in our lives. Have a
weekend of surprises accommodating God! Fr. Jude Botelho |
|||||||||||
|
The time is the 8th. Century BC and king Ahaz is
worried whether the kingdom of Judah will be destroyed by his two powerful
neighbours. King Ahaz waits for the attack of his neighbours with fear and
helplessness and looks around for allies and help. He decides to go to
Assyria, a superpower and ask for help to destroy his powerful neighbours.
Isaiah is advisor to king Ahaz and is strongly against what the king is
doing. He argues that the dynasty of David will not be preserved through
playing power politics but only through trusting in the God. The prophet
gives the king a sign ‘the maiden is with child and will give birth to a son
whom she will call Emmanuel, a name which means ‘God is with us’ This sign is
given to the king to assure him that God is with Israel But Ahaz refuses to
believe in the sign and trust in God. The second reading from
Paul’s letter to the Romans emphasizes two important aspects of Jesus that we
should think about during this season: Jesus’ humanity and Jesus’ divinity.
In Jesus’ humanity he descended from David and was the Jesus of Nazareth, human
and subject to weaknesses and to death. But Jesus was also uniquely Son of
God, the source of all holiness and life for the entire human race, who was
able to communicate the gift of the spirit of God through his resurrection
from the dead. We are called to belong to Jesus, and are through him the
beloved of God called to be holy like him. Attitude changes things! In today’s reading of Matthew’s Gospel, unlike King Ahaz, who did not
trust God’s sign given to him, Joseph puts his trust in the rather upsetting
sign of Mary’s mysteriously conceived child. Thanks to Joseph, of the family
of David, Jesus will belong to the royal line. And, because of his faith, it
is Joseph who gives the child rightful name: Jesus, which means –God saves!
Perhaps there are those who fear the approach of Christmas for whatever
reason, they can take heart and hope from the story of the first Christmas.
There was plenty of fear present there too! In fact all the main characters
in it were afraid at one time or another. Joseph was afraid when he found
that Mary was expecting a child even though they hadn’t been living together.
But the angel appeared to him to reveal to him who the child was. Joseph did
not fully understand, but being a just man, trusted God and so overcame his
fear and did what was right. All of us are touched by fear at one time or
another but we must not let our fears cripple us. Like Joseph we must seek to
do the just and loving thing so that we move from fear to faith. Trust it the
thing that enables us to move from fear to faith. The Christ child who comes
to us at Christmas challenges us to enter into a intimate trusting relationship
with God, trusting that we will receive love, and always more love. Though
his humble and trusting action Joseph cooperated with God’s plan and provided
a space for Jesus in his family and in the world. By trusting and cooperating
with God in our own humble way we too can create a space for him to enter
into our live and into the present world. Heroic Duty The country doctor Brunoy had just said good bye to his colleagues who
had confirmed that Jean, the doctor’s only son, would die in a few hours of
diphtheria. The anti toxin injections had been too late. As he now sat with
his wife by the boy’s bedside awaiting the child’s death the doorbell rang.
The doctor shouted to his secretary, “I don’t want to see anyone.” But the
visitor would not go away. It was the farmer Rivaz who had walked 10
kilometres from Roseland. His son was sick. “I’ll come tomorrow” the doctor
told him. “But if you don’t come now, he won’t make it through the night,”
the farmer insisted. Then began a discussion…. “You can cure my son.” “But
mine’s lost, he’s beyond all cure.” “But mine isn’t.” “Well, I’ll come
tomorrow morning.” “Then it will be too late.” “Let me close the eyes of my
dying child.” “But if you cannot help him any longer….” “As long as my son is
alive, I’ll remain with him.” “All right, then both the children will die.”
The doctor then asked for the symptom’s of the boy’s sickness and they were
the same as his son’s had been. But it was still not too late to save him. So
the doctor decided to go with the farmer. Ludolf Ulrich in ‘1000 Stories You Can Use’ "When Matthew tells of the annunciation to Joseph, he is not
concerned with the latter’s psychological reactions. He is simply trying to
answer the question: “Who is he Messiah?” For Matthew, Jesus,’ who will save
the people from their sins’ is the ultimate heir of Israel, and it is Joseph
who gives Jesus a place in the genealogy of David. Joseph was informed from the outset about the expected birth
(and what more likely person than Mary?). He thought it was his duty to
efface himself before the mystery, in which he seems to have no role. But God
intervened and made clear to him that although the child in Mary’s womb was
of ‘the Holy Spirit’, he Joseph, would have to guarantee its legal status and
recognize it as his own. By means of Joseph, the house of David was to accept
‘God-is-with-us’ in this son, and so welcome the whole programme of salvation
from the incarnation to the ascension. Even today we describe the birth of a
child as a ‘happy event’. But what words can describe the birth of this
child, –this event in which Joseph played a humble but indispensable part? We
are dealing here not just with the story of another human family, but with
the very story of salvation itself –the story of Emmanuel – ‘God-is-with-us’ -
Glenstal Sunday Missal With eyes wide shut In his book Beyond East and West John Wu has a fascinating
passage. It reads as follows: “My wife and I had never seen each other before
marriage. Both of us….. were brought up in the old Chinese way. It was our
parents who engaged us to each other, when we were barely six years of age.
In my early teens I came to know where her house was. I had an intense desire
to have a glimpse of her. In coming back from school, I sometimes took a
roundabout way so as to pass by the door of her house….. but I never had the
good fortune to see her.” Wu goes on to say that he realizes the old Chinese
marriage sounds incredible to Western readers. Some of his Western friends
could hardly believe it at first. Wu says he was surprised his friends found
the system so incredible. He asked them whether they chose their parents,
brothers and sisters. Then he said, “And don’t you love them just the same?”
John Wu’s passage from his book helps us to appreciate better the
relationship between Joseph and Mary before Jesus’ birth. Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’ A wondrous happening Sometimes fact is more mysterious than fiction! The
"Denver Post" printed an article December 23, 1981 about a
stranger-than-fact event that occurred in Colorado. Stan Sieczkowski heard in
church about a Denver family facing a rather bleak Christmas holiday. Medical
bills robbed them of any extras; they would not even have a tree. So Stan and
his son Jay determined to get them that tree. They headed up into the
Colorado Rockies in the family pickup. However, the truck skidded off the icy
road and hit a boulder that shattered the windshield. Jay was showered by
glass slivers and suffered from shock and crash trauma. Stan was uninjured,
though somewhat shaken. Cars sped past that day -- maybe 200 of them. Only
two stopped. A gentle, dark-haired woman took the boy into her car to comfort
him while her husband and another man helped Stan move his truck off the
road. Then they drove father and son to Stan's home and quietly left without
identifying themselves. Later that month, Stan's pastor asked if he might deliver
a food basket to the unfortunate family for which he had earlier tried to cut
a tree. Stan found the house, but he could hardly find his speech when the
door opened. Standing there before him was the same couple who had helped him
on the mountain road! Call it an amazing coincidence...or call it divine
providence. Some mysteries are better left unanalyzed. But it is nice to
remember that, when we give our hearts away in a spirit of generosity, we can
still brush up against wonder, joy and love. Steve Goodier May we fit into His plan rather than make our plan for Him! Fr. Jude
Botelho |
|||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
|
Other Sunday Homily Websites Daily Reflections Immaculate Heart Retreat Center Gospel Commentary from Ireland Daily Scripture |
Recent
Sunday Reflections Third
Sunday of Advent 16-Dec. 2007 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
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
