Last week we saw the fountain of Divine Mercy started flowing. This week Jesus is asserting that His mission is to let God’s Mercy flow continuously and without stop. We today are witnesses to the world to that flow and that is why we are here together.
In the first reading we hear from the book of Nehemiah the story of the Israelites before their captivity and the working of the Law of God. It was the narrative of a disharmony occurred in the life of the people of God. St. Paul is giving an interpretation to the Corinthians as to how such disharmony happens. If the different limbs of the one body work in different directions, the body cannot function properly and so lands up in disharmony and eventually ends up in destruction. Paul’s conclusion is that we form part of Christ’s Body and unless and until all of us work in unison, Christ’s mission will suffer.
It means, none of us can afford to find excuses in not taking up our task. If at all we hear that God is failing this world, that things that should not happen are happening, it is because some or many from us are not working in such unison. Hence we have to revisit Jesus when He asserts:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
This was the good news with which Jesus appeared on earth. In order to continue this proclamation and this mission on earth He called us and sent us. This calling and commissioning happened at the time of our baptism. Every time we gather around the altar of sacrifice in our places of worship, every time we get together as a family, as a community of God’s children, God’s people, it should be an occasion to re-assert this our mission and re-group ourselves for this task. The more of us fail in this, the less harmony the world will have and the world will feel the absence of God.
Fr. George