10 January 2017 - one origin

 

[ Today's Readings ]

 In "subjecting" all things to him,
he left nothing not "subject to him."

Even the demons are subject to him.

A new teaching with authority.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.

Yet it doesn't always seem this way.

Yet at present we do not see "all things subject to him,"

The world still is still full of pain and suffering and sorrow. How can we say that all things are subject to Jesus when this is what we see? Let us look to Jesus before we look to these circumstances because we see Jesus "crowned with glory and honor". But we realize that we see this precisely because "he suffered death" and that he tasted death for everyone by the grace of God. He makes us perfect through his own suffering. He does so not because he has to. His word is sufficient to heal us. His teaching has all the authority he needs. Rather, he does so in order to draw near to us and reveal his love for us. Somehow, if he simply waved away our suffering we could not come as close to him as we do when he shares our suffering with us and transforms it.

For it was fitting that he,
for whom and through whom all things exist,
in bringing many children to glory,
should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
He who consecrates
and those who are being consecrated all have one origin.
Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them "brothers"

Jesus knows what we're going through. He wants us to share it with him and let him transform it so that we can offer it together to the Father as an acceptable sacrifice.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (see Romans 12:1).

What is missing in an external healing that doesn't share the suffering of the one who hurts? Empathy is missing. Meaning is missing, for suffering can be transformed into grace that can renew us, but suffering that is brushed aside must have merely been a fluke. Jesus does have empathy for us. Our suffering does have meaning, or at least it can in him.

You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.