MY BROTHERS
AND SISTERS,
“The word of
the LORD came to me, saying:
Before I
formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you
were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to
the nations I appointed you.”
We can take
comfort in these words spoken to the prophet Jeremiah, for He is also speaking
to all of us. These words define our relationship with God. He knows all of us
completely: from our thoughts to our physical being. Nothing escapes His
awareness of us. We are His children and He loves us completely. When we were
created, God indeed claimed us as His own. Since that moment we have been
invited to partake in His complete love for us and experience our lives with
Him. It is the most important and unique relationship we will ever have. There
is an eternal bond with God that He will never break. That is His promise to
us.
The bond of
Love that joins us to God is unbreakable as long as we permit it to be. It has
the ability to withstand any crisis that might arise in our lives. Too many
times, when we encounter problems or situations which confront us, we tend to
approach the obstacle in a state of hopeless. We become introverted, allowing
the stress and anxiety of the moment to seize control of us. We forget the love
that God has for us and how He would never let us confront these challenges
alone. It is with God that we can overcome anything in this life. He created us
and He created the entire universe. Because He created all things and His love
permeates through all of creation there is nothing that can oppose it or defeat
it. In the end, god’s love will always triumph. We must never forget that we
are at the center of this love. All of God’s attention is always on us.
We are
always at risk of being abandoned by those we think love us the most. This love
that we share amongst our fellow human beings is imperfect and is always
challenged by outside forces. It is a conditional love that can easily be poisoned
by pride, selfishness, and everyday problems. We are all bombarded with
negative thoughts, influences, and interactions that will put this human love
to the test.
Those who professed to love Jesus the most
were the first ones to abandon him. We read today in the Gospel how those who
knew Jesus since he was an infant could not accept Jesus the Messiah. They
could not envision Jesus, the son of Joseph, to be more than what they labeled
him to be. He was nearly killed by those who, at one time, thought they knew
him best. They could not accept one who they thought they knew to be something
else even greater. We as Christians can relate to this. When we allow ourselves
to be transformed by the Living Word of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to experience
the unconditional love of God those who thought they knew us will look at us
differently. Some will celebrate the change and embrace us with encouragement,
reacting to the Light of Christ within us. There will be others who cannot
accept this change. They will be too influenced by the prejudices that were
formed by past behaviors and actions. In reaction to this, we must accept the
negative with the positive knowing that all of us suffer from the same
condition and find it difficult to refrain from judging.
Our focus
must be continuously on the Love of God: the Love He has for us and the Love
that we have for Him. In the end it will always prevail and mold us into the
person that we should always have been.
Deacon Tom
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