The First week (1:19-51) The third day, the first disciples are gathered (1:35-42)

Posted on March 21st 2010 in St. John's Gospel

The first week continues to unfold. John the Baptist concludes his mission now by pointing towards Jesus. His designation of Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God’ emphasises the sacrificial nature of Jesus’ mission. The shadow of the Cross is forever present which makes the calling of the disciples so poignant. They too will have to share His destiny but these nuances are not grasped fully by the first disciples. The account begins with John the Baptist staring hard at Jesus which was enough for his two disciples to go after Jesus. The disciples’question, ‘where do you live?’ might sound rather prosaic, but carries a deeper meeting since Jesus brings the kingdom of God, heaven with him. Their question vocalises all those unformed questions inside us as to peace, reconciliation, belonging, meaning and purpose. Jesus takes the initiative and invites them to stay, to experience this for themselves, and then in turn to become messengers (apostles) of Jesus Christ. Throughout the Gospel the emphasis will be the fact that Jesus chooses and sustains them, as seen in the dialogue on the night of His arrest: ‘I chose you and commissioned you’ (15:16).

The response to Jesus’ invitation is to follow, and the verb is mentioned eight times in this short passage, thus emphasising the disciples’ commitment. This commitment manifests itself in the search for further disciples, so Andrew brings Peter to Jesus, describing Him not just as ‘Rabbi’ but Messiah, which marks a deepening of his faith. The full faith of the Prologue will not be possible till after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Easter.  Jesus in meeting with Peter takes the initiative again and gives him a new name to mark out the mission that he has planned for him. This divine commission has added meaning in the light of the risen Jesus’ last conversation with Peter, ‘Do you love me, Feed my sheep’. The formation of Peter, despite all his weaknesses, to lead the nascent Christian Church after Pentecost starts here.

Caring for the parts for which one is personally responsible contributes to the common good

Posted on March 21st 2010 in Weekly messages

Two weeks ago the Bishops of England and Wales issued a document entitled ‘Choosing the Common Good’. This comes some 15 years after their previous document called, ‘The Common Good’. The new document develops the first by stating more clearly the nature of the common good, and by laying greater emphasis on personal responsibility rather than broad generalisations of a mostly liberal and anti-capitalist nature. This document will also respond to the crisis that is affecting the Church over the issue of child abuse. At the heart of this tragedy is the terrible and unnecessary suffering of many children, but to make matters worse, when these allegations against priests were brought to the attention of Church authorities they were investigated in the most causal fashion and later covered up.

The document from the Bishops states that ‘the virtues form us as moral agents so that we do what is right and honourable ....irrespective of reward. It is doing good even when no-one is looking’. The care of the whole, whether it be of the Church, society, or the family, is made possible only through the care extended to that part for which each individual is responsible, be it their Parish, their local community or just their family. This abandonment of responsibility for the part has caused terrible suffering throughout the whole Church.

The temptation in contemporary society is to push difficult issues onto someone else to resolve, or to hide the problem from public scrutiny. In the case of child abuse, this attitude has had disastrous consequences.  This lack of responsibility has been seen all too often within
the Church both here and elsewhere. This same lack of care, and/or the taking of personal responsibility, has been seen in cases within the Social Services, where scores of officials have failed to note and to act on problems by completing the necessary checks. There is now a much greater sense of responsibility within the Church over the issue of child protection, and although no legislation can prevent every human action, the culture of cover-up has been addressed.

The Church has a mission to restore trust in its visible structures, something which remains a real possibility. This crisis has nothing to do with the content of faith, nor has it brought into question the pastoral work of education, hospital care, and the alleviation of suffering that the Church undertakes throughout the world. The culture of secrecy is the potential sin of every bureaucracy, and it is not something restricted to the Church. This culture of self-serving, of which secrecy is an outward manifestation, is parasitic on the strength of that organisation and, with regard to the Church, this is the essential life of its parishes. A similar culture exists with regard to government with its excessive reliance on legislation and managerial process that feeds parasitically on the exercise of good citizenship undertaken by so much of the population of our country.

The culture of self-serving is the opposite of the idea of the ‘common good’ which emphasises the solidarity of the human race as being children of God. Each individual action bears a responsibility towards the whole, whether good or bad. This responsibility grows and develops throughout life, and the challenge is always to take responsibility for the other, through the care expressed in the context of one’s own life. The crisis within the Church over the issue of child abuse makes us all too aware of our need to care for each other, and not to be intimated into a culture of secrecy within which evil can flourish.

The First week (Continued) (1:19-51).The second day:John the Baptist gives witness to Jesus(1:29-34)

Posted on March 14th 2010 in St. John's Gospel

The witness that John the Baptist gives of Jesus is as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ and demonstrates that, from the very beginning of Jesus’ public life, the element of sacrifice is present. Indeed, this sacrifice becomes the means by which He is identified. The description of Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God’ brings together a number of Old Testament themes, that of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (taking on the sins of the many), and the Paschal Lamb of the Passover sacrifice. The symbolism of the Passover runs through the whole Gospel, and the details of the Crucifixion have strong Pascal Lamb connotations – the date of the crucifixion, the use of the hyssop stick, and the fact that no bones are broken.

The Baptist’s witness to Jesus echoes the themes of the Prologue when St John states that Jesus existed before me (the same use of the imperfect tense, was, to denote eternity). The pre-existent Word will become flesh in Jesus Christ, thus the Word pre-exists the historical birth of the Baptist. Jesus enters a world scarred by sin, a place of darkness.

John the Baptist’s divinely appointed task is to point towards the source of light even if he did not know beforehand that Jesus was either the Lamb of God or the Chosen one of God. The use of the perfect tense, ‘I have seen and I have witnessed’, emphasises both the historic nature of John’s mission and its present force. The revelation of the Trinitarian identity of Jesus at His Baptism sets the scene for the public life of Jesus. The descent of the Holy Spirit inaugurates the new age since neither Judaism nor John the Baptist possessed the Holy Spirit as of right. The ability for the believer to grasp the full identity of Jesus Christ as the one on whom the Holy Spirit has descended requires the baptism of water, of conversion, in order to grasp that previously the believer has been living in darkness.