WORD 2day: 18th December, 2014

Third Thursday of Advent
Jer 23: 5-8; Mt 1: 18-25

Emmanuel,  our justice

The most challenging of all attributes of God is what Jeremiah notes today: the Lord our justice. It was the experience of God that proved salvific for the people of Israel and it was the same experience that proved their detriment when it was to deal  with their way of treating the strangers, the orphans,  the widows and the helpless.

The Lord showed them his preferential love because they were exploited  and those who exploited he reduced them to nothing. Today the Lord lives,  the Lord lives with us and we are invited to acknowledge that presence of the Lord amidst us. In acknowledging it, we acknowledge the call that each of us has received in the Lord- to be instruments of this special presence of the Lord.

Joseph received the instruction as to how to be that special presence. He carried it  out diligently and secured his irreplaceable niche in the marvellous plan of God.

WORD 2day: 17th December, 2014

Third Wednesday of Advent

Gen 49: 2, 8-10; Mt 1: 1-17

The Lord of History

Every time one reads the part of the Gospel presented by the Word today, one is filled with an awe at the wisdom of the Lord of History. History is in the hands of the Lord; the Lord creates, shapes and determines the history of humankind. How  foolish of us to think that we are making history or we are writing it ourselves. 

There are two aspects of the genealogy that impresses us at the very outset: 
First, the faithfulness of God from time immemorial. God promised something and he remained faithful to that promise for centuries and centuries together. It is this fact that inspires St. Paul to declare that even "if we are faithless, he remains faithful"(2 Tim 2:13). This faithfulness is underlined in today's Word from the first reading.
Second, the fact that the genealogy presented includes names such as Rahab the prostitute; Ruth, a non Hebrew woman; Bathsheba, an illegitimate connection and so on! It is an unparalleled statement made by God that anyone can be God's instrument in creating history and writing it, provided God wills it.

Let us believe: in and through us, here and now, the Lord is writing a history! We would do well to surrender ourselves totally into God's hands and be docile to God's promptings that we would be worthy elements of that history.