Passion Sunday 25.3.12 Receiving the Messiah
It has been a long time since God the Son came to the earth. Around 2000 years.
If it was an incredible thing that God would become Man and dwell among us, it must be also an incredible thing that His coming could have met with so little enthusiasm from the human race.
He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. They did not receive Him as the true Messiah, much less as the true God.
They questioned Him too much and were not humble enough to accept the simple truth. It was reasonable to ask questions at first but they kept on questioning, long after He had proved Himself by words and actions.
And people today try to reduce His importance by speaking of Him as just one other saviour along with others; as just a do-gooder; as someone who meant well but did not quite know what He was doing.
Even those who have received Him as Messiah and God generally have not received Him in sufficient depth.
We have not sufficiently understood that His becoming Man was meant to change completely and forever the way we think and act.
Many Catholics who might be happy to profess belief that the Word has come among us and died for our sake etc – do not realize that these facts mean He has transformed human nature.
So the ‘old man’ is dead; the new is here in its place. The old man of anger, lust, gluttony, envy etc is dead. The new man has only love, peace, joy, kindness and the like.
If only more people had believed in Him then, and since. If only those who do believe in Him now would let that belief translate into their daily lives.
The old saying still applies: Christianity has not failed; it has never been tried!
During the week a report was released into the Irish Catholic Church and its handling of sex abuse cases.
The report said, naturally enough, that the Church in Ireland needs to lift its game and observe the very highest standards of behaviour and accountability.
But this does not go far enough for the critics. For them it is not just enough to say, Do better. They say the whole culture of the Church is wrong. We should not have celibacy, for instance.
Catholic teaching is routinely portrayed as unrealistic, especially on sexual matters.
No, we are not unrealistic in our teachings. The unreality is on the side of those who do not accept that in Christ we are made new.
If we think the Church’s teachings are too hard it is because we have not grasped the fullness of His coming, the power of His grace working in us.
It is not the laws that need changing; we need changing! And we are changed as the goodness of Christ comes into us through prayer and sacrament, through our full and much overdue acceptance of Him as Messiah, Lord, Saviour and God.
We are not being asked to change ourselves by our own strength; merely to let the grace of God carry us.
In this way we put the old man to death and let the new man emerge.
God is prepared to forgive any sin, including the sin of not welcoming Him when He came to us.
In admitting that we have done a fairly shoddy job of welcoming Him so far we will in that very act of admitting be opening our hearts and minds to receive Him more fully.
As we prepare to re-live His crucifixion let us not repeat the rejection which caused that event. We re-live the event so that we can say, Never again. Never again will we miss the presence of God when He comes. From now on we give Him every possible recognition and response. His sacrifice is not in vain.
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