Fr René Camilleri
Our true self
Today’s readings: 1 Sam. 3, 3-10.19; 1 Cor. 6, 13-15.17-20; John 1, 35-42.
Following Jesus Christ has always been marketed as closely bound to renunciation of self. Today’s Scriptures give a different version. It may seem at face value that there is no connection at all between the call of Samuel and the first disciples of Jesus and what St Paul says about sins against the body in his letter to the Corinthians.
Following Christ is also a way of finding oneself, of being fulfilled, of finding a home, as Andrew and Simon Peter did with the simple initial question addressed to Jesus himself “Where do you live?”.
From the high-flown talk on the pre-existence of the Word, in the same first chapter of John’s gospel, it is intriguing how John ends in this simple narrative of a friendly acquaintance that was meant to last.
Faith, beyond the intellectualisations we often enter into, remains ultimately very relational and personal. God always reaches out to us. This is how the faith encounter is basically projected, particularly in Samuel’s calling and in how Jesus recruited the first disciples. It happens as something very homely.
Yet there is always an attitude of listening involved. Listening, of course, with the whole self, not only soul, but body and soul. “Wisdom,” writes Stephen Cherry Barefoot Disciple, “demands that we take the risk of being overwhelmed”.
If it is truly God who is calling, it is always overwhelming. And if there is a risk in that, it is always a joyful risk, even if it makes us vulnerable to some extent.
Christ is the key not only to God’s manifestation of Himself but also the key to the human mystery itself. In fact this is the remarkable shift we are called to make in the way we connect with God as human beings.
It is in this context of our possible connections with God as bodily beings that Paul in the second reading speaks against the commercialisation and the objectification of the body.
According to the Christian perspective, the body is the vehicle of God’s mystery and transcendence. It is through our bodies that we relate to God spiritually. But our body, as Paul is suggesting, can also serve as a blockage in all this.
Creating boundaries between soul and flesh is not, strictly speaking, the Christian way of seeing things, though, of course, along time that is what we’ve mainly done insofar as the body was concerned. Very often we entered blind alleys and antagonised body and soul, the spiritual and the material, God’s calling and the desire to be ourselves.
Blessed John Paul II’s so-called Theology of the Body, based on the reflections on the body and sex, fortunately enough goes beyond these antagonisms, conflicts and anxieties that have heavily marked our understanding of sexuality and our being human. This takes us to the roots of our crises today where the body and bodily life are concerned.
Beyond the struggles for sexual liberation that marked the modern period, and beyond all the issues that distort the true meaning of the body and of sexuality, we need to come to terms ultimately with our calling for authenticity.
When Paul speaks of the body not being meant for fornication, he is affirming the golden rule that whenever and in whatever we envisage the body as an end in itself, all sorts of distortions follow.
We are not just our bodies. Redemption means the possibility of seeing beyond materiality. Affirming with Paul that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit opens wide open the doors towards authenticity, which brings serenity and equilibrium in our lives and offers safeguards against all the possible distortions of our humanity.
Seen in this light, the entire notion of the self and of Christian living are reconciled. We turn inward only to connect and relate ourselves to God, because it is to him that we belong, and the more we seek to own ourselves the less we find our true self.
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Susan Farrugia
Jan 15th, 15:01
it is not so much as loosing ourselves but in letting go of all that is not of God. for in finding Christ we find our true selves and this is wholeness (holiness). God created us to be whole being and not part or bits and pieces but whole so entering on the journey of relationship with Christ we enter into the journey of coming to know ourselves and to be who we are truly meant to be. we are meant and have been created to be fully in the image of Christ, conformed to Christ and this can only be done if we follow him closely and allow him to live in us. This is the Incarnational reality that we may not always think of. 'Christ within you, your hope of glory' Col 1, 27. we follow Jesus and what is interesting in this passage is that JB does not keep the disciples to himself thus inflating his ego but rather points to Christ, it is in this that he decreases that Christ must increase. our ego must decrease that Christ's life within us in the Holy Spirit must increase. we follow after Christ until there will be that moment when he turns and asks us 'what do you want?' that is the time of the Fundemental option - we cannot follow Jesus from afar but only as disciples, we cannot be comfortable Christians, armchair Christians but true disciples. The Lord does speak, but are we listening and when he does speak our lives change, they must change for the Word of God is alive and active, cutting through bone and marrow and the Word, the very same Word creates us anew, calls us out of our passivity, our graves of self and makes us new beings - 'come and see' Jesus says - this is the invitation to each and everyone of us... come and see - see what I can do with your lives... come and see!.
God bless you
Sue Farrugia
Theology Student UOM
Susan Farrugia
Jan 15th, 15:01
it is not so much as loosing ourselves but in letting go of all that is not of God. for in finding Christ we find our true selves and this is wholeness (holiness). God created us to be whole being and not part or bits and pieces but whole so entering on the journey of relationship with Christ we enter into the journey of coming to know ourselves and to be who we are truly meant to be. we are meant and have been created to be fully in the image of Christ, conformed to Christ and this can only be done if we follow him closely and allow him to live in us. This is the Incarnational reality that we may not always think of. 'Christ within you, your hope of glory' Col 1, 27. we follow Jesus and what is interesting in this passage is that JB does not keep the disciples to himself thus inflating his ego but rather points to Christ, it is in this that he decreases that Christ must increase. our ego must decrease that Christ's life within us in the Holy Spirit must increase. we follow after Christ until there will be that moment when he turns and asks us 'what do you want?' that is the time of the Fundemental option - we cannot follow Jesus from afar but only as disciples, we cannot be comfortable Christians, armchair Christians but true disciples. The Lord does speak, but are we listening and when he does speak our lives change, they must change for the Word of God is alive and active, cutting through bone and marrow and the Word, the very same Word creates us anew, calls us out of our passivity, our graves of self and makes us new beings - 'come and see' Jesus says - this is the invitation to each and everyone of us... come and see - see what I can do with your lives... come and see!.
God bless you
Sue Farrugia
Theology Student UOM
Mr Emanuel Farrugia
Jan 15th, 11:30
Bringing People to Jesus
The Gospel of John is certainly the most difficult of all the Gospels because he uses a symbolic language to describe events. We notice that while the Baptist remains in the same place, Jesus begins to travel around (cf. Jn 1:35-36). John remains stationary because he has finished his mission. He knows that it is Jesus who must grow (cf. Jn 1:29-30). Our communities must be like the Baptist and not look for disciples for themselves.
Jesus is walking along the sea, along the shores of our lives and John, acts as a photographer, records it. He uses the verbs in the participle to tell us that today, Jesus still is passing by us, and our lives can be visited and crossed by him and our world can welcome the imprints of his footsteps.
The center of the passage is perhaps precisely in the movement of Jesus, He walks first, then turns and stops, his eyes, his heart, about the life of the two disciples. Jesus "turns", that changes, adapts, leaves his position before and assumes another. Here Jesus is revealed as God incarnate, God came among us, man. He turned from the bosom of the Father and turned toward us. Here Jesus is revealed as God incarnate, God came among us, man. He turned from the bosom of the Father and turned toward us.
We, who have discovered Jesus and have seen that he has words of hope and salvation for all, will not want to keep such news just to ourselves. We will want to proclaim it to others, so that everyone may meet the one who has the answers.
Emanuel Farrugia [TARXIEN] former student Faculty of Theology UOM