2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B, 14th January, 2024

 
“We must learn who to look for, and also where and how to look for them: in a home, in the place of the closest and truest human relationships; even within ourselves, in that dwelling that becomes our flesh, now the dwelling of God, the temple of the Spirit!” May we through the benefits of this holy Mass seek God in spirit and truth. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(1 Samuel 3,3b-10.19; Psalm 39 (40); 1 Corinthians 6, 13c-15a.17-20; John 1,35-42: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B, 14th January, 2024)

The apostle Paul makes us hear a formidable statement today: "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?" (1 Cor 6,19). There is something revolutionary in this phrase, which overturns the criteria with which we are used to imagining the experience of God. In ancient cults we went to the temple to meet God through the mediation of a sacrifice. Animals were sacrificed as substitute victims for one's personal sacrifice. It was necessary to mortify one's body in some way to allow the spirit to become worthy of the experience of the Saint. Not being able to put their own body to death, animals were sacrificed to replace it. This theme of mortification, understood in this misleading sense, has been well present in Christian spirituality and probably still is, at least in part. Paul invites us to convert our gaze/our perception: it is not a question of abandoning the body or putting it to death, but of welcoming it and honoring it as it truly is, the dwelling place of God in the Spirit. If it is necessary to take care of the sanctity of one's body, it is not because one mistrusts it, recognizing it as a place of temptation, fragility or sin, but for the opposite reason: it is the home of the sanctity of God. The presence of the Spirit in our body responds to the logic of the incarnation with which God chooses to manifest himself in history, through progressive stages. His Word was first incarnated in the word of the prophets and wise men; in the mediations of the Law, of worship, of the priesthood, of the temple; in the events of history, interpreted in the light of prophetic and wisdom revelations. Finally, His Word incarnated fully and definitively in the humanity of the Son. By virtue of this culminating incarnation, our very room is transformed into the abode of God. It becomes the body of Christ: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor 6,15). It is to this goal/this point of arrival that the readings of today lead us. The liturgy makes us listen to some stories of calling today: that of Samuel in the First Testament, that of Andrew, his anonymous companion and his brother Simon in the New Testament. In all these cases the word of the Lord reaches us through human mediations. You listen to the word of God by listening to that of your brothers. Samuel needs Eli's word to understand that the voice he is listening to is that of God himself. Andrew and his anonymous companion also begin to follow the Lamb of God after accepting the Baptist's announcement. Peter himself will need Andrew's testimony. The word of God is intertwined with that of men: one resonates within the other. Just as, in a similar way, the dwelling of God descends into our human dwellings, and our homes become the dwelling of God.

The first two disciples, to the question with which Jesus asks them, seem to respond in a banal way: "Rabbi, where are you staying?", "Come and see". The evangelist then narrates: “So they went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day” (John 1,38-39). There is all the theological wisdom of John in these few lines. To know who Jesus is, we need to understand where he lives. At the end of the Gospel we will understand his home and his relationship with the Father; that is the place from where he comes and to which he returns, the house in which he lives, to lead us there too. Jesus came to this abode to prepare a place for us, so that we too can be where he is. The communion with the Father, which he lives in the Spirit, he also gives to us. He even builds it in us. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14,23).

In the ancient liturgy, the celebration of Christmas was followed by three stories of manifestation (epiphanies) of Jesus: the revelation to the Magi, the baptism near the Jordan, the wedding at Cana. The liturgy born from Vatican II preserves this succession only in one of the three years of the liturgical cycle (year C). In this Year B of the Ordinary Time, the story of Cana is replaced by this other Johannine passage, with the call of the first disciples. The suggestion that the liturgy offers us is therefore to read this text more in its epiphanic perspective than in its vocation/follow after me. This too is an epiphany of the Lord!

By coming in our flesh, in addition to revealing himself, Jesus reveals us to ourselves in a new way. Our existence is transformed, just as Peter's name is changed. By dwelling where Jesus dwells, in the same love that unites him to the Father, we ourselves become the dwelling place of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the place where God comes to live. This is the experience that the disciples begin to live in this hour that they will never be able to forget: around the tenth hour, four in the afternoon. Simone becomes Cephas, stone, rock. It becomes a place where all God's faithfulness lives. With Andrew, Peter, Mary, the other disciples, we must learn to look not for something (what are you looking for?) but someone, as at the end of the Gospel, the Risen One will ask Mary Magdalene: "Woman, who are you looking for?”. We must learn who to look for, and also where and how to look for them: in a home, in the place of the closest and truest human relationships; even within ourselves, in that dwelling that becomes our flesh, now the dwelling of God, the temple of the Spirit! + John I. Okoye.