Repent, For the Kingdom of God is Near

12-04-2022Weekly ReflectionFr. Manasseh Iorchir, VC

For the ancient Jewish people, there were three boxes to be ticked in order to prove the authenticity of the expected Messiah. The Messiah would have to come from the royal household of King David, He would establish justice in the land, and He would cause the restoration of the incredible peace found in the original garden of Eden.

In the First Reading, the Prophet Isaiah reiterated these “marks” of the Messiah as held by ancient Jewish Theology. Isaiah maintained that from the stump of Jesse (the father of David), a shoot shall sprout and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him. Unlike the kings and judges of this world who base their adjudication on appearances and hearsay, the Anointed One shall judge faithfully and justly. As a direct consequence of His restoration of the right relationship, peace and wellness shall characterize His reign. At a time when God considered appropriate, and in fulfillment of this prophecy of hope, the Father sent His only begotten Son to take flesh in order to redeem man. It is the commemoration of His first coming and in preparation for His return that we wait in hope.

The Gospel introduces us to John the Baptist, the precursor of our Lord who prepared the way for His eventual manifestation and introduced Him to the people when He began His public ministry. For John the Baptist, preparation for the coming of Christ consisted of true repentance, humility and self-mor tification. He preached a change in behavior. Repentance for him would be futile without good fruits as evidence. Any claim of repentance without a concrete change in lifestyle is empty and banal. He therefore challenged the Pharisees and the Scribes who claimed Abraham as their father and so assumed the right to the inheritance of his spiritual estate, not to rely on mere assertions of affinity but to prove their ancestry through tangible good works.

Like the Pharisees in John’s time, we may claim to have received conversion and repentance, we might say “I am baptized”, “I am a Catholic”, “I am a minister in my Church”, or even “I am a priest”, but if we do not have good fruits as evidence of conversion and repentance, then we are actually sinning by presumption by putting our confidence in external makers of our Catholic faith. The Gospel Reading shatters the security that comes from belonging to any group. True conversion and repentance must go beyond belonging. It should affect a tangible behavioral change that testifies to the newness that has been received. Repentance means self-reformation, turning around one’s life from vice to virtue; it means negating the life of darkness, and as St. Paul describes it, putting on the new person, taking on new values and attitudes as well as prioritizing Jesus. Repentance is a process, sometimes a long and painfully slow one that goes on for a lifetime and only people of great faith truly effect it successfully in their lives.

Let us ask the Lord to grant substance to our efforts, to effect true repentance in our lives as we await the coming of the Redeemer.

Please be kind and may God bless you.

Fr. Manasseh

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