The Way: it's all about relationships!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

January 24, 2025 - Celebrating St. Francis de Sales

Hebrew 8: 6-13; Mark 3: 13-19

The first reading raises an important question: what has changed with the coming of Jesus, in the self-revelation of God? God has always revealed Godself as related to the people - you shall be "my" people and I shall be "your" God. The covenant that God made with the people, was the central and definitive feature of God's self revelation and God's nature.It was fundamentally, the way that God wanted to be related to the people and the way God wanted people to be related to God. 

When Jesus comes around, it continues to be about the covenant, but this time it is about a "New" covenant. As we see in the letter to the Hebrews, the old covenant that had existed from time immemorial, needed a revamp...because people had lost real touch with it, they had forgotten the crux of it: that therein, mercy and faithfulness encounters each other. And Jesus comes as the realisation of that encounter and reminds us of what a covenant truly is: relationship, and what God's natures is: relationship.

Yes, it is all about relationship. That is the reason Jesus began his ministry by gathering a community around him... the apostles. Even when Jesus ascended to his Father, what he was leaving behind to ensure the establishment of the Reign was, the community of apostles, persons related to each other in mercy and love because of their relatedness to Christ, that revelation of God.  

The Saint whom we celebrate today, Francis de Sales, is known as the Doctor of Divine Love, because he reminded us untiringly of the need to practice and strengthen the charism of love - love for god and in turn, a love for one's fellow beings simply and reverently. That is the centrality of relationships in the faith that Jesus has initiated us into.