OT II [B] I Sam 3:3b-10, 19; I Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20; Jn 1:35-42

A stranger once asked a teacher, “What’s your profession?” The teacher replied, “Christian,” The stranger continued, “No, that’s not what I mean. What’s your job?” The teacher asserted, once again, “I’m a Christian!” Puzzled, the stranger clarified, “Perhaps I should ask, what do you do for a living?” The teacher replied, “Well, I’ve a full-time job as a Christian. But, to support my sick husband and children, I teach in a school.” — That teacher had certainly understood the meaning of discipleship summarised by today’s Responsorial Psalm (40): “Here I am, Lord, I come to do Your will.”  What is that God wants us to do? The characters in the Scripture reading will help us to find out.

John the Baptist recognized himself as someone called to prepare the way for the Greater one coming after him. He saw the Spirit coming down on Jesus and revealed to him that Jesus was the chosen Son of God. Far from keeping that discovery to himself, he shared it with his own disciples, even though he knew that in doing so, he was going to lose them to Jesus. He pointed two of his disciples in the direction of Jesus. A short while later, one of those two disciples, Andrew, did for his brother, Peter, what John the Baptist had done for him. He led his brother to Jesus. In the first reading, Eli did something similar for Samuel, helping him to hear God’s call. The readings this Sunday put before us three people, John the Baptist, Andrew and Eli, each of whom, in different ways, led others to the one who is the source of life. They all lived to do God’s will.

We could probably all identify a John the Baptist or an Andrew or an Eli in our own lives, people who, in some way or another, brought us to the Lord, or helped us to recognize and receive the Lord who was present to us. We might think first of our own parents who brought us to the baptismal font. As early as possible into our lives they wanted to say to us what John the Baptist said to his disciples, ‘Look, there is the lamb of God’. Then, as we began to grow, they helped us to know the Lord whose followers we had become in baptism, bringing us to the church, praying with us, reading stories from the gospels to us, taking us to see the crib at Christmas, placing an image of the Lord or of one of the saints in our room, helping us to prepare for the sacraments of the Eucharist and Confirmation. If we were fortunate, we might have had a good religion teacher at school who took us a step further in our relationship with the Lord, who enabled us to ‘come and see’, in the words of the gospel reading today.

Samuel, who was led to the Lord by Eli, is described in the first reading as a boy. However, the two disciples who were led to the Lord by John the Baptist and Peter, who was led there by Andrew, were all adults. It was as adults that they allowed themselves to be directed towards the person of Jesus. In our adult years, we too may have met people who helped us to grow in our relationship with the Lord.

At any time in our adult life we can meet a John the Baptist who says to us, ‘Look, there is the Lamb of God’, and that can happen to us over and over again, right up to the very end of our lives. The Lord never ceases to call us through others. At no point does he say, this person no longer needs a John the Baptist. There may indeed come a time when the Lord asks any one of us to be a John the Baptist or an Andrew or an Eli for somebody else. We hear the call to share our faith in some way, to open a door to the Lord for others. Our response to such a call can take many different forms. For Eli it took the very simple form of saying the right word to Samuel when it was needed.

Today is a day to give thanks for all those who introduced us to the Lord, who played the role in our lives that Eli played in the life of Samuel, that Andrew played in the life of Peter, that Peter played in the life of many others, and that, later on in John’s gospel, the Samaritan woman played in the life of her townspeople, and that Mary Magdalene played in the life of the other disciples on East Sunday morning. Both these women played a significant role in bringing others to the Lord. Each of us is called to bring others to the Lord, perhaps just one person. We don’t have to be great missionaries to introduce someone to the Lord. Very often, our own quiet and faithful witness to the Lord and his way of life will, in time, bear that rich fruit for others.

But let’s realize the fact that before bearing witness, we should know the one we are going to bear witness, to know Christ, the lamb of God. Knowing Jesus is a matter of personal and first-hand experience of Jesus, which is obtained through the meditative reading and study of the Bible, through personal and family prayers, and through the Sacraments, especially by participation in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and primarily in the Eucharistic celebration.

Once we have experienced the personal presence of Jesus in our daily lives, we will start sharing with others the Good News of the love, peace, justice, tolerance, mercy, and forgiveness that Jesus preached. May the Lord help us to have a dynamic and living experience of Jesus, which will enable us to invite and encourage people to come and participate in our Church activities.

 EPIPHANY OF THE LORD: Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6; Mt 2:1-12 

 

The feast of the Epiphany is the celebration of the Lord’s manifestation to all peoples, represented by the Magi, who came from the East to adore the King of the Jews.  The adoration of the Magi fulfils the oracle of Isaiah in the first reading, prophesying that the nations of the world would travel to the Holy City following a brilliant light and would bring gold and incense to contribute to the worship of God.

 

In the ancient world, the appearance of a new star or a comet was often associated with the birth or death of a great ruler. According to our gospel reading, when these magi from the east noticed a new star rising, they associated it with the birth of the long-awaited King of the Jews, and so they set out in search of this child. Their fascination with the wonders of creation launched them on a spiritual journey, a pilgrimage. They left their home and set out on a long journey, guided by the new star they had seen rising. There is something of the searcher, the seeker, in each one of us. There is always some restlessness within us, a restlessness of the spirit and of the heart. Saint Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. That spiritual restlessness often sends us forth on pilgrimages to places that have been touched by God in some special way. We leave home, if only for a few days or weeks, and we set out to a holy place where we sense we will meet the Lord or the Lord will meet us. Even if we never set out on a physical pilgrimage, like the magi, we will always be giving expression to this spiritual restlessness within us, this deep-rooted desire to come closer to God. It is this restlessness which inspires us to pray, brings us to Mass and to the sacraments.

 

As well as being aware of our searching spirit, we can also be aware of being drawn by the one for whom we search. Jesus says of himself that he came to seek out the lost. His search for us is prior to our search for him, and our search for him is ultimately in response to his search of us, his searching love. The Lord drew the magi to himself through a star. The Lord drew them to himself from within the world with which they were familiar, astrology, the world of the night sky. The Lord often draws us to himself from within the world that is familiar to us.

 

The magi came to a point on their journey when they needed more than the signs of nature to find the child whom they were seeking. When they came to Jerusalem, they had to ask, ‘Where is the infant king of the Jews?’ To make the last short step on their long journey, they needed more than the light of a star. They needed the light of the Scriptures. The chief priests and the scribes who knew the Scriptures were able to point them in the direction of Bethlehem. On our own journey towards the Lord, we too need the light of the Scriptures as well as the light of nature. The Scriptures are a fuller revelation of God than the natural world. It is in and through the Scriptures that we meet God and his Son in a special way. Through the Scriptures, God speaks to us in a privileged way. God asks us to listen to his word and to allow our lives to be shaped by what we hear. The wise men allowed themselves to be guided by the Scriptures, as well as by the star. They displayed the kind of responsiveness to God’s word to which we are all called.

 

Having been moved by the presence of God in nature and in the Scriptures, the wise men came face to face with God in the form of a child newly born to a young couple. The wise men did not worship the star; they did not even worship the Scriptures. But they did worship the child, because they recognized that here in these simple surroundings was Emmanuel, God-with-us. We too worship Emmanuel, and we do so in a special way every time we celebrate the Eucharist. The wise men expressed their worship by offering the child their precious gifts. They gave generously. We too express our own worship of the Lord in the Eucharist by offering him gifts, and the most precious gift we can offer is the gift of ourselves. In the Eucharist we are invited to give ourselves to the Lord, in response to the Lord’s giving of himself to us as bread of life. We say, ‘Here I am. I want to do your will’, in response to his saying to us, ‘This is my body. Take and eat’.

 

After worshipping the child, the wise men returned home by a different way. Their meeting with the infant king of the Jews somehow changed them. Their journey away from Bethlehem was different to their journey to Bethlehem. Our own worship of the Lord in the Eucharist will often prompt us to take a different path too. We come to the Eucharist open to being changed in some way by our meeting with the Lord. We are sent out from the Eucharist to follow the way of the Lord more closely.

The magi only came to Bethlehem once. We come to the Eucharist often. We do so because, like the magi, we are seekers. We come to the Eucharist to seek the Lord. In the words of a modern hymn, we want to know him more clearly, to love him more dearly and to follow him more nearly. Our seeking of the Lord is a response to his seeking of us, his calling out to us. We pray on this feast of the Epiphany that we would be as responsive to the Lord’s call as the wise men from the East were.