Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 19 January 2014

Fr Robin Gibbons

One of the great things about being a member of a faith community is a shared experience that binds us together although we may not always understand it as such. Too often we concentrate on the divisions that exist between our churches listing the things that divide us, all those reasons why unity hasn’t come just yet!

Even though we may belong to different Christian families, our vocation to be Children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus , teaches us that there is also much that we share. A common language is one, no not Latin or Greek or Slavonic but the images, symbols and words about our faith and the Gospel. Who in the Christian community does not know the words of the Our Father? What church does not say ‘amen’ or sing ‘alleluia’?

Then there are names we call God, the triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Paul writing to the Corinthians uses a greeting that is still part of many church liturgies . It is a beautiful blessing full of peace and love:‘Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ Perhaps in our more cynical age we ought to recover and use ancient words of blessing such as this and make them part of our daily life, a witness to faith.

John the Baptist had that transforming moment of recognizing Jesus as the true Messiah at his baptism, this has been passed on to us in our own church family tradition, a living symbolic language that we learn by practice, for we know exactly what John meant by calling Jesus the Lamb of God.That teaching is rooted in our Catholic liturgy as we say or sing ‘Lamb of God’ at Mass and hear the words of the priest holding the host before us at communion, ‘This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’ .

Christians have so much we have to be grateful for, Isaiah helps us see that our God is always with us, leading us onwards. Our destiny, like Israel, is to be a light for the nations so that the good news of salvation may be spread through all the earth. May our prayer be that of the psalm: here I am Lord, I come to do your will!

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time