Reflection
I loved our first reading today. The unknown author of the letter to the Hebrews quotes Scripture but often does not know where to find the passage being quoted. The writer says, "someone has testified somewhere...." The following is in the Bible somewhere - I just don't know where it is. We Catholics know a lot of scripture; we just don't always know where to find the scripture passage. The writer to the Hebrews is our Bible quoting Patron Saint:)
The first reading begins with a quote from the Psalm today (Psalm 8). It begins with how glorious God is. His name is revered throughout the earth. This being the case, why does God care about human beings? The psalmist says that God is "mindful" of man. He thinks about us; He has us in His mind. He never forgets us. And He goes beyond this, He cares for us. He made human beings a little lower than the angels, yet He has crowned us with glory and honor. He has made us rulers over His creation. Why does God share His glory with lowly humanity?
God has subjected the whole creation to humanity. However, at the present, we see the world out of control. Sin has entered the world and messed everything up. Humans are supposed to be kings and rulers, but sin has turned us into slaves. So, even though we do not see everything in subjection to humanity, we do see Jesus "crowned with glory and honor." This is what God wants for all of us, but we are living below our dignity as the children of God.
Jesus is the perfect human. Even though He for a little while is made lower than the angels, He is crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. Jesus tasted death for everyone. He is the very one who created us and intended glory and honor for us, but he died so that we might become the men and women we were created to be. He came to bring us to glory, to consecrate us to God. And He does this as one who was made perfect through suffering, as our brother. Even though we are sinners and living beneath our rightful glory and honor, Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.
In the Gospel we see Jesus setting a man free from the torment of an evil spirit. Jesus came to set us free from sin. We can be freed from the evil spirits that surround us by surrendering to Christ. A couple weeks ago as we recited the story of the birth of Christ we were reminded of the glory of the angels as they filled the skies singing the news of Jesus’ birth. Today, in our first reading I was struck by the sentence “he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,”. God choose to leave Heaven, to become lower than the angels He created, to become human in a fallen world. There are no lengths to which God will not go…for my salvation! Why does God share His glory with lowly humanity? Because HE LOVES US and He created us for holiness and kingship.
In this new season of ordinary time, let’s spend an extraordinary amount of time in prayer encountering this tremendous love of God.