Readings:
Isaiah 48:17-19
Matthew 11:16-19
Reflection:
Today’s excerpt from Matthew follows revelations that John the Baptist is having second thoughts about Jesus being the One to come. The great judgment that John had predicted hasn’t materialised. He is in prison, and corruption still abounds. Is Jesus really the Christ who will sort them all out or is it going to be someone else to come?
Jesus’ response is to tell John’s disciples that the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are healed and the poor have received the Good News. Look about! The Kingdom is already here!
But the problem with the current generation, is that they neither listen to John nor to Jesus. People think that John was crazy because of his austere lifestyle. On the other hand, Jesus’ habit of eating and drinking with sinners has earned him a reputation as a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. So they listen to both but hear neither. They are like children who can’t decide whether they want to play wedding songs or funeral dirges and so they play neither.
“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” Jesus says. His deeds are concrete evidence that he is the Christ, the embodiment of the wisdom of God, “the One who is to come.”
In our generation, where everyone is a spruiker, through media, social media, influencing, lobbying etc., how do we ever know what is genuine, what is truthful, what is of God?
I think that the 8th Century chant, Ubi caritas et amor, pretty much sums it up, Where there is charity and love, there God is.
God, Who came to dwell among us and Who dwells among us still. Look about!
Brian Norman has been associated with the Passionists in various ways since he was three weeks old when he squared off with Fr Placid Millay CP over the baptismal font at St Brigid’s, Marrickville.