DJC
We have just journeyed through Advent and Christmas – contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation. In a month’s time we will enter the season of Lent as the Church prepares for the central mystery of this year and all years (until the end of time itself) namely that through his Passion Jesus will definitively defeat the power of sin and death and then, after three days, rise from the dead this Easter. Then the ascent of Jesus to the Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit” mentioned by St John the Baptist in today’s gospel.
But now we have entered Ordinary time, when no particular aspect of the mystery of Christ is celebrated, but rather – in the words of the Roman Missal - “the mystery of Christ itself is honoured in its fullness, especially on Sundays”. (GIRM 43) So it would be good to remind ourselves this Sunday why Christmas and Easter, why the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, why the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, why did the Word of God became flesh, why the Incarnation at all?
For the answer we could simply look to the name of Jesus – God saves: “...you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21) the angel says to St Joseph. Yes – Jesus came to save us, to reconcile us with God; today St John the Baptist exclaims: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). Yet did not Jesus also come to reveal God and His love for us for he told Philip “he who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9) the Father who “… so loved the world that he sent His only Son”? (Jn 3:16). Jesus also came to be our model of holiness - “Learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart” – but this would be futile if He did not also, through Baptism by water and the Spirit, make us partakers of His Divine nature – in the words of St Athanasius: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God”.
Yes - Jesus came to save us, to reveal God to us, to teach us and to divinise us. But there is a reason that is fundamental to all these. In Christ humanity is saved and divinised for a purpose – that from humanity, made in His image and likeness, God will receive perfect praise and worship. God became one of us in all things but sin so that, from mankind, God may be truly worshipped; that in Christ – in the words of the Second Vatican Council “ the perfect achievement of our reconciliation came forth and the fullness of divine worship was given to us” (SC 5).
We could say that worship is the first act of fallen humanity that goes wrong. Adam and Eve instead of reverence for God’s presence flee from Him (cf Gen 3:8); Cain’s act of worship, his sacrifice, was not accepted because his heart was at enmity with his brother (cf Gen 4:4-7). The Exodus from Egypt was primarily so that Israel could worship: “Let my people go...” God says to Pharaoh through Moses “...that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness” (Ex 5:1). “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2-3) was the first commandment to the Chosen People, yet Israel will fall repeatedly into idolatry . We heard the story of Hannah in the first book of Samuel this week, who is mocked for her barrenness by Penninah, the other wife of Elkanah - every time, we are told, that they went up to Shiloh to worship God – “ as often as she went up to the house of the Lord she used to provoke her” (1 Sam 1:7)
How far short we fall of right worship if left to ourselves. It is telling that the devil’s parting shot to Jesus in the wilderness was a desperate attempt to secure His worship – after showing him all the kingdoms of the world he says “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matt 4:9) to which Jesus replies “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only you shall serve” (Matt 4:10). Jesus victory over Satan is the victory of true worship over idolatry.
We are designed, built, created to worship. Worship is our end, our purpose, so worship is good for us – it sets us free from turning in on our self, places us as creatures before our infinitively loving Creator, frees us from the slavery of sin and the idolatry of the world for if we do not worship God then we will choose something or someone else; in words from the Catechism - the “commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from endless disintegration” (CCC 2114). How much disintegration we see in our world today. If ignorance of God is, as the Church teaches us, “the principle and explanation of all moral deviations” (CCC 2087) then surely a failure to worship has a great part to play. Worship lifts us from the turbulence of our own times to the for ever and ever of God who governs all things both in heaven and earth (cf Collect 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time)
True worship unifies us individually and communally (cf CCC 2105). This is God’s desire for humanity – unity, not division (cf Jn 17:11). This week we pray for unity among Christians. All this glory, this worship we give to God then comes to us for in the words of St Bonaventure - “God created all things not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and communicate it” (In II Sent. I, 2, 2, 1) and of St Irenaeus “the glory of God is man fully alive” (Adv. Haeres 4, 20, 7). So Jesus came that we may have life and have it to the full, that we may worship God in spirit and in truth (Jn 4:24), to share the very life of God Himself and partake of his glory. We are in the right place, so let us give praise and worship to God.