Friday.blog
The Catholic Calendar for Friday, December 31, 2004
Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas
St. Sylvester I, pope
Scripture from today’s Liturgy of the Word:
1 John 2:18-21
Psalm 96:1-2,11-13
John 1:1-18
A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture:
And the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. (Jn 1:10)
This may be one of the saddest lines in the entire Bible. Jesus was in the world. Not only was He in it, but through Him the world came to be; and yet still, the world did not know Him.
The situation has not changed today. We celebrate Christmas even in our highly secularized culture, but we meekly greet people with 'Season’s Greetings,' or 'Happy Holidays.' The entire country largely stops on one day of the year, and yet we refuse to acknowledge that day for what it is.
Historians have started to use a dating system that dates everything B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) because the Latin phrase 'Anno Domini' or A.D., the Year of the Lord, is 'not sufficiently inclusive.' What could be more inclusive than salvation for all who believe in Him? What could possibly be more inclusive than honoring Him who created all.
And yet, as a society, as a world, we do not. Even individually, we sometimes have real difficulty seeing God for who He is. We sometimes have a distorted view of the God who loves us.
So let’s take a hint from St. John and do our best to turn this all around. We may not force the world to know Him, but we certainly can pray for the grace to see Him in everything around us. We can start to see Him in all that, and the blind world can lean upon us as we guide it toward the Light of salvation.
- JuandelaCruz
(sriddle415 at yahoo dot com)
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