Remember how there was only a reduced Fourth Week of Advent this liturgical year? Well, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has given us another twist this year. USCCB has moved Epiphany from the traditional January 6th to January 5th so Epiphany would fall on a Sunday. I presented my Daily Reflection for Epiphany yesterday. In the meantime, USCCB provides for readings for this now extra day in the Christmas calendar.
By the time John wrote today’s reading (1 John 5:5-13), he had not yet been banished to Patmos. Jesus had been long resurrected and ascended into Heaven. The church had already suffered tremendous persecution. Most of the original twelve had already suffered martyrdom, including the Apostle Paul. Even so, the main problem confronting the Church during the last two decades of the 1st century was heresy. By the time John wrote this letter, he was writing to 2nd and 3rd generation believers, and the joy of the Resurrection and its meaning for their lives had, in some ways, passed away.
John lived during the church’s zenith years as well as during its decline, a church whose faith in Jesus Christ was faltering. False teachers were plentiful, and their teachings were causing many to stray from the true Gospel and to conform to the standards of the popular culture and the world. The Holy Scriptures were being branded as out of date with the current times. Heretical teachings were causing the church to slip away from the true foundations of the Christian faith. Sounds like today, doesn’t it?
But John tells us that we must not follow those false teachings. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life.” John is giving his own personal testimony, that as a disciple, now Apostle, of Jesus Christ, that he, John, along with the other disciples, was with Jesus in the flesh. They beheld His glory with their own eyes, they listened to His teachings, and they touched the Son of God made flesh with their very own hands. John even had the grace of placing his head on the chest of Jesus and heard the heartbeat of God. Everything they had given witness to and recorded in their gospels and letters was true.
Amid persecutions, resulting in a legion of doubts and fears, plus heretical teachings by false prophets who have infiltrated the church, is paralyzing the faith of many. Yet John reassures us that our faith in Jesus Christ will overcome the world.
There once was a farmer who hired a driller to dig a well for a new apple orchard on his farm. They agreed that the cost of the well would be determined by its depth. Nine feet down, the driller hit water. The driller told the farmer that the well would last for a good many years. But the farmer asked him, “Will this well be deep enough to make it through the dry seasons?” “No,” replied the driller, “this well is good for normal years, but when it comes to dry years, it won’t be deep enough to bring you water.” The farmer simply said, “Keep on digging.”
By late that afternoon, the driller had hit 50 feet. He looked at the farmer, looked the approaching sunset. The farmer simply wiped his sundrenched brow as he turned and began to walk to the farmhouse, and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, keep on digging.”
Early the next morning the well digger was at it again. He Hit 75 ft., looked up, and the farmer said, “keep on digging.” At 100ft, he hit an artesian aquifer. “Good,” said the farmer, “You’ve gone deep enough.”
“I’ll pay the price for a well that can handle the dry seasons.” Dig your well of faith deep in the good seasons of your life, so that when the dry seasons come, and they surely will, you will have a faith to handle loss, a faith to handle serious illness, a faith to handle heartbreak, a faith to handle persecution, a faith to handle any disaster.
Many people think that today’s Gospel reading (Luke 3:23-38) is like the story of the farmer and driller. Lots of detail, but not very exciting. While Matthew’s genealogy includes women, and shows a number pattern, Luke simply spends fifteen verses listing name after name, stepping all the way back from Jesus to the very beginning.
But even in Luke’s genealogy, I noticed something amazing. Luke ends the genealogy: “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (v. 38)
While Matthew’s genealogy steps us forward from Abraham to help us see how Jesus is a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, and how the Messiah is Abraham’s descendant, Luke takes the opposite approach. Luke draws our attention to the very beginning, to how Jesus is really God’s own Son.
Luke begins Jesus’ genealogy by saying, “When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli, …” (v. 23). Luke tells us that people believed Jesus to be Joseph’s son, even though Luke believes differently. Luke traces Jesus’ ancestors all the way back to God.
While it would make sense for Luke to stop with Adam at the end of his genealogy, Luke goes one step further and draws our attention to how Adam, the first human, was God’s son as well. In this way, Jesus also becomes like a “Second Adam” who succeeded where the first Adam had failed, and that regardless of what we think of Jesus’ birth, we can be assured that He really was God’s descendant.
In Luke’s genealogy, we also have another insight. If Adam was God’s son, as Luke describes, that makes each of us God’s children as we all have descended from Adam and Eve. This makes us all children of God. And the big challenge I am left with after this realization is that if God is truly my Father, then what sort of reputation is He receiving from the way I act?
As children of God, we are all representatives of Him and His character. As God’s children, He loves each of us enough to have sent Jesus to pay for our sins. As children of the King of the Universe, we have an amazing opportunity when we choose to focus on the only relationship that matters in this life – our relationship with God. We can best know and understand God’s love for us through Jesus.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!