January 11 |
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Feast of the Baptism of Jesus Lk 3/15-16 21-22 |
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| Background: I was told by an archaeologist (who was also a devout fundamentalist) that there is a passage in St. John's Gospel which is a quote from a Greek playwright and that there was a Greek theater at Seporis, the big city near the then hamlet of Nazareth. However, he insisted it was unthinkable that Jesus would have attended a Greek play. Well, maybe Jesus did attend the Greek theater and maybe he didn't. But we must be wary of trying to fit this most illusive of men into our own paradigms. For us this Sunday, it is probably best to emphasize against the Monophysites among us the humanity of Jesus and the fact that he came only gradually to understand his religious mission, through study and work and following earlier leaders like the Baptist. Given the temper of the times, however, you might be delated to Rome for insisting that Jesus was truly human and grew in wisdom age and grace and was attracted to the religious and spiritual teachers of his day as he clarified his own understanding of the Father in Heaven. It might also be worth suggesting that the Baptist was to Jesus what Scottie is to M.J. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time Mollie Whuppie and a bunch of her friends from Mother Mary High School invented a time machine so they could go back to Rome to collect information for their term papers in Classics (they don't call it Latin any more). They had a grand time in Rome because everyone liked their cellular phones (don't ask me why they worked two thousand years ago, but they did). The last time however they made a slight mistake in programming their time machine and ended up in Galilee at the time of Jesus and indeed met his little band of followers walking down a mountain road. He of course knew who they were but didn't mind them tagging along for a day. They thought he was like very neat, much more fun that the teachers in school thought he was. He made them promise not to tell what happened. So they hear some wonderful parables that never made the Gospels and saw him heal some sick children and heard him refute some really creepy Pharisees. At the end of the day, they were still on a high from their great adventure, but Jesus said it was time to get a good night's sleep. They were shocked. You're God, Molly goes, you shouldn't get tired. Well, I'm human too Jesus said and I'm going to sleep. Molly and her friends were suddenly sleepy too and they quickly were in the land of Nod. When they woke up the next morning they were back in their parish. That day at school Molly goes to their religion teacher, Did Jesus ever get tired? Of course not, the teacher snapped. I bet he did, Molly. Well, said the teacher, he never really have to get some sleep. He did too, Molly goes. The teacher said she was a heretic, probably a Nestorian. Mollie just laughted. |
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