For the past month, after the Christmas cycle, we have been treated to the Letter to the Hebrews, a reflection upon Christ the new High Priest. Today and tomorrow, we are sent way back to the beginning, to the first Genesis account of “the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation” (as Genesis 2:4 expresses it); so we are invited to reflect upon the great mystery of creation -- why there is something rather than nothing. It is almost as if God is saying to us , once again, “I am the Lord and there is no other,” and don’t you ever forget it! If God just IS and is the source of everything else that exists-- if there is nothing on the face of the earth or anywhere in the universe that is not created by God -- well, then, of course, we owe everything we have and are to God. Thus, the First Commandment! As Fr. James Alison has recently reminded us, “For monotheistic Judaism, as for monotheistic Catholicism, which I take to be universal Judaism, the principle temptation is not atheism, but idolatry.”
So I am inviting us to simply pray over our being God’s creation, God’s handiwork, with gratitude, confidence, peace, joy; and then to examine the idol-making activity of my own mind, my own life. What are the “other gods” that I have created and given allegiance to? And a further and much more subtle examination: who are the others (the “enemies”) that I have somehow used to define my own righteousness and excluded from the blessings of creation and redemption?
The example and practice of Jesus, so vividly depicted in today’s Gospel reading, can then be a reminder to me that, to be a disciple of Jesus, I must enter into his ministry of healing and restoring creation. That means not excluding anyone from the outreach of my friendship and service. God is One, and I and everyone else and everything else in creation is the Other, the result of God’s infinite generativity and the object of God’s tender mercy and ever-loving care. For God is the One who makes the sun shine and the rain fall on everyone and everything, good and bad alike. I am called to be and to do the same: in the words of Jesus, “Be compassionate as your Heavenly Father is compassionate.”
By this time, we all know that we have much to pray for, both for ourselves and for one another!
Member of Creighton University Community
Since its inception in 1997, Online Ministries has been blessed to have myriad members of the Creighton University community offer their personal reflections on the daily scripture readings.
