21/01/2023

It was pretty cold last night as befits St Agnes' eve, but I read the mass readings for today as I wanted to stay with the thread of To the Hebrews. 

The writer is living and learning his faith. He is simultaneously teaching and understanding. The concept that Jesus had become the perfect sacrifice in continuation of the liturgical worship that had begun under the leadership of Moses and Aaron in the days of the nomad people continually moving on to feed their flocks and to collect manna, was not the immediate proclamation of the Apostles after the Resurrection. For them the Resurrection itself was the "Good News" that God had given to them.

We do not know much about Jesus' childhood. We do know that he grew up in Nazareth and that he was subject to Mary and Joseph, who was seen to be his father. We have a pious notion of the "Holy Family" which is a typical nuclear family of the Western experience. The hints that Scripture gives about Jesus' family, in fact, tell us otherwise. Jesus the child, youth and young man must have grown up in the typical sprawling extended family of his day and in such a group there is always in addition to the "black sheep"one "nutcase" an outsider who is still part of the family but noted for his eccentricities.

The family had tolerated Jesus for the qualities that were recognised by the scholars in the temple but when he started to expect them to feed the throng of sinners, sick and beggars who had soon attached themselves to him, that stretched their toleration to breaking point. Jesus their brother and uncle was mad. there was no doubting it, he must be put away, cast off. Is this why the " The Son of Man had nowhere to rest his head"?

Dear Lord in your lifetime on earth you were always surrounded by people whom you loved. Sometimes your Father called and you prayed in the perfect Love we know as Father Son and Holy Spirit. We as mankind need to be in a community. I feel cut off from family, who do not believe and from the institution that your body on earth has become today. Let the prayers of Mary who  must have had such difficulties in domestic life especially after the death of St Joseph be answered that my family and my Church know that it is only in this life that we can be prepared by openness to your Grace for the Eternity which is the Joy you have prepared for all of us.