You are What you Do: Jesus is Savior because He Saves!
Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28
There is an area of our lives where lying or lies telling is almost impossible – it is the area of human behavior: you are what you do, you are how you behave; the society has got names for different things people do, and for the different ways people behave. If you cultivate the land, you are a farmer or a gardener, etc. If you have a child as a man, you’re a father, and if you are a woman, you are a mother. If you steal, you are a thieve; and the way you steal can qualify you either as a robber or brigand. If you do good, you’re a good person, if you do bad, you are a bad person.
In Christian ethical parlance, it is not always day and night what people are or who people are because there are some gray areas, because people are not perfectly what they do or who they are. As a result, Virtue Ethics thinks of people or human beings as “products in progress.” Human beings are not finished products, but in the process of becoming. If you continue to do good, you will become a good person. If you continue to do bad, you’ll become a bad a person. This Virtue Ethics is the level of God or the measure of human behavior vis-à-vis God, not human standards.
God is called a Savior today because he saved Israel in the past and because we continue to experience him as a Savior today. Despite the bad news in our social, news and print media, there are success stories and good news of what great and positive things human beings are doing: saving refugees, feeding the poor, visiting prisons and hospitals, combating poverty, and all sorts of social and corporal works of mercy. God’s actions towards human beings have been salvific and human beings call him a Savior. “God is love” because love only becomes real and concrete in action. Although we don’t see God, we experience and feel him through what he does directly or indirectly.
The prophecy of Isaiah (61:1-2, 10-11), our first reading, inaugurates the Messianic Age – what will happen when the Messiah, Jesus Christ, comes: healings, exorcisms, liberations from all shackles – physical and spiritual, unity and peace. In today’s world, do we have these situations around us or not? We hear about and watch scenarios of wars, famines, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis: our television sets are conveyors of bad, rather than good news! Indeed, to make matters worse, our first reading claims that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, here and now, and that we are to carry out these prophetic agenda! How do we go about being prophets and emissaries of God and Jesus Christ?
We see in Christ the embodiment of goodness, healing, power and peace! How come his world, 2,000 years after his coming, does not exude these qualities? Perhaps it is because his world has forgotten to imitate him! For there to be peace, each one of us must concretize, in our lives today, the prayer of saint Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Yes, “rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16), says our second reading, because of Immanuel – the Lord is with Us – because you and I are God’s presences in the world today, we are those upon whom the Spirit the Lord rests! And we, like John the Baptist, are the voices and presences of the Messiah in the world today (John 1:6-8, 19-28). Our prophetic mandates through the presence of the Holy Spirit has to show the world the presence of God within it – Immanuel.
Our world today, especially non-Christians, asks of us similar questions as those of the Jews, Levites and Priests to John the Baptist in today’s gospel: the world asks who are we as Christians, given the inhumanities we experience today? Who are we as Christians or who do we pretend to be if the righteousness and justice of God is not being experienced today? Like John the Baptist, we can proudly respond that we a9re architects of peace and love in the world. We may not be the Messiah himself, but the little we do are signs of the presence and the coming of God. We can raise our heads high and let the world know that it is possible to rejoice even in an imperfect world, because the world belongs to God, and we join in making it a better place.
Assignment for the Week:
Can you point out one social or corporal work of mercy you are engaged in as a proof of your contribution towards making the world a better place?