February 2012  

                             

                                 JESUS, ALL AND EVERYTHING

 Jesus is the most exciting person who ever lived.  Do you believe that?  Do you and I really think of him in that way?  How do you and I think about his role in human and divine history?  Very important questions for us.   

We can name famous actors like Clark Gable or Johnny Depp or Jennifer Lopez and songsters like Doris Day or Lady Gaga.  We can name famous would leaders like Thomas Jefferson or John Kennedy.  How about great authors like Mark Twain or Bishop Sheen?  There are plenty of people whose history we sometimes enhance by our imaginations.  Imagine having Billy Crystal as President of the United States with Robert DeNiro as Secretary of Defense and Joe Pesci as UN Ambassador! 

Measured in world terms, these are very successful people.  Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Billy Crystal is great at the Academy Awards.  Bob Hope owned “half” of Los Angeles. 

Even using our imaginations, can we see any of these people creating a universe or a tree?  How about creating a baby or a brain and think of allowing humans to see in color?  Touch your skin.  How does it hold in the fluids that make up 2/3rds of our bodies?

How about ourselves?  What is great about what we do?  Maybe we do well at teaching or in the stock market or in leading our Catholic lives.  All great things.  All things we can more or less understand and appreciate. 

How did all this life and talent come to be?  They were created by the will of the Father and through the power of Jesus Christ.   And no matter how much we think we know, the most consistent thing about our knowledge is that it is incomplete.  Think about the very disciplined learning required in physics and chemistry.  Yet, new universes and new medicines continue to be found.  How unbelievably powerful is this Jesus!  He is so powerful that unless we use our imaginations we cannot approach the possibilities of his power.  Jesus is the most exciting person who ever lived.  Do you believe that?   

The Gospel shows us how this powerful Jesus lives with his people.  The Gospel tells us to hear his words and live as he did.  He cures the sick, feeds the hungry, teaches the poor, and protects his people.  He does not withdraw from cowards, or hypocrites or mobs.  He has this wonderful, giving personality wrapped in courage, humility, kindness, graciousness and mercy.  Which one of us as God would choose to be born as a human, in a stable, no less?  Which one of us would choose to be subjected to our subjects and live a life as an itinerant preacher who depended on others for all his needs? 

You and I know love.  We can reach out to those we love.  We can reach out anonymously to people around our nation and the world.  However, which one of us can love so much that we can reach out and raise someone from the dead as Jesus did for his friend Lazarus?  You and I can forgive others for things that may be comparatively simple when we see the scope of evil that can and does exist in the world.  How many of us could forgive those who commit the genocide which has taken place among many peoples and many places around the world?  God has to watch his children killing his children!  What is the source of this power of love and forgiveness?  This power that gives Light to our hearts and has us act contra to what some might call common sense?  It is the power of our Lord Jesus Christ!  See what the Gospel tells us about how Jesus forgives the woman caught in adultery.  Hear how Jesus forgives the good thief and his murderers as he hangs on the Cross.  Understand why and how he lives with us in the Sacraments especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation.  What love he must have to willingly give himself up to crucifixion for our salvation and conquers our greatest fear, death.  He, the Christ, is the one who takes all our human loves, woes and differences and makes universal reconciliation possible. 

In being and doing all these things, the Lord, Jesus, acts in a profound way to nurture our minds and hearts so that you and I may reach out in Faith to search out his existence and rejoice in the greatness of his being.  We can enjoy him as the Star of Stars, the King of Kings.  Jesus is the most exciting person who ever lived.  And miraculously, he still lives in you and me and you and I live in him.  We need to ask ourselves, “Do my mind and heart acknowledge Christ as the most exciting person who ever lived?”  Do I live that belief?  Do I revere Jesus as all and everything?  Aren’t those questions important to whom we really are?  When was the last time your or I, on our own, read the Gospel, the books which help us love the Lord with our minds and help us reach out to grasp at his greatness with our imaginations as best we can?

 

By Deacon Bill Masapollo