The New people

WORD 2day: Monday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

January 18, 2021: Hebrew 5:1-10; Mark 2: 18-22

When the Lord announces in the book of revelation, 'Behold I make all things new,'... we know well that it's not merely about some "things" to be made again or re-created; it's primarily about a new mentality, a new perspective that God wants to instil and inspire in us. The source and the spring of this new perspective is Christ himself. He is at the same time the priest and the sacrifice; the prophet and the Lord of the prophets!

In fact with a new way of relating with us, with the unique way of sharing our very nature, Christ makes us a new people! And that is what the Lord wants to see in us: our new selves, free from the shackles of the past and the prejudices of the ages, to relate with each other anew and to live with each other without any conditions or preconceived notions.

Being new persons is not being strange, but being recreated in the Spirit, being imbued with the newness of the Gospel and being inspiring and to some extent being even scandalous. Some truly Christian attitudes are scandalous - forgetting the evil done to oneself, forgiving the harm intended, loving the one who hurt you, doing good in spite of the evil done against you, helping someone whom you hardly know or from whom you can expect no return, standing by the weak and the helpless despire the inconveniences and discomfort that is cause to oneself - these are scandalous, aren't they? 

We are called to conform to the Spirit of Christ, not conform to the practice and system around. That is the crux of being New people today!