My Homily, April 3rd

 Readings: : Isaiah 49:1-6, John 13:21-33, 36-38

  I love Isaiah, there is truly no one from the Old testament more up to the task of leading us into Holy week than he.  here’s a dude who truly gets it.  Yesterday, in one of my favourite passages of the Bible, we heard Isaiah prophesy about how the Son of God, who would be so loved, and cherished by God, that the Lord would place upon him his very spirit, which would empower him to faithfully bring forth justice.. That particular passage, 42:1 is the centre piece of the Matthew’s account of the Baptism of our Lord (it’s referenced twice during the passage). We can see the similarities between the two passages, as Jesus   not only gets baptised, and receives the spirit of God, but gets a public praise and affirmation from  the Great I Am, who lets the world know how special this Jesus of ours really is.

Today’s account continues to develop this theme of being the son, and servant of God and everything  that special relationship to God entails. Obviously, any exegete who looks at this Text will say “clearly, he’s talking about Jesus’ , and clearly he is, speaking about the one who will bring all people before God, who will reconcile to Him all those who have fallen away from  The Path that God has set for them, and who will bring to God many new people. But for us Christians, there is another way of reading Isaiah. Yes, we understand that this is about Jesus, but if we’re brave enough, we can also see that this passages is a call to all of us. For we too, have been called from the womb and have been known intimately by God. We too have been blessed with his spirit which does an infinite amount of great things within us.  We too, have had the almighty look upon us  and say with delight “truly, this is my child.”

    

    Why should the analogies between Christ and ourselves end there? We too, are being called to bring forth justice into the world; we too are called to  be a light to the nations, that God’s salvation my reach the end of the earth.  For what Good is our faith if all we do is recognize that God loves us, takes care of us, protects us, and saves us from evil, if all we do is lead a good  decent life  of comfort?  We are not adopted as children of God so that we can take comfort in our salvation, but so that we can become Men and Women of the world that are taught and formed by God, and will go to the ends of the earth to proclaim God’s wondrous deeds.

But before we get to our own special vocation before God, we must accompany our Saviour, as he walks through his passion. This is why Santiago was urging us to spend more time with Jesus yesterday…not so we just ‘chill out’ with the lord…but so that we may share with him, as we did during the exercises, the very core of his experience of the passion. The rejection, the mockery and humiliation that is to come, the pain, the hatred of others… this is the heart of our faith this week. For having accompanied our Lord through his passion, having felt the pain and darkness with him, we can then accompany many others who have been forsaken by the world, the same way Jesus would be forsaken by his friends.