Catholic Caucus: Daily Mass Readings, 1-02-03, Memorial, Sts Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen

Reading I
1 Jn 2:22-28

Beloved:
Who is the liar?
Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ.
Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist.
Anyone who denies the Son does not have the Father,
but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.

Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you.
If what you heard from the beginning remains in you,
then you will remain in the Son and in the Father.
And this is the promise that he made us: eternal life.
I write you these things about those who would deceive you.
As for you,
the anointing that you received from him remains in you,
so that you do not need anyone to teach you.
But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false;
just as it taught you, remain in him.

And now, children, remain in him,
so that when he appears we may have confidence
and not be put to shame by him at his coming.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4

R (3cd) All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.
Sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done wondrous deeds;
His right hand has won victory for him,
his holy arm.
R All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.
The Lord has made his salvation known:
in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.
He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness
toward the house of Israel.
R All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation by our God.
Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands;
break into song; sing praise.
R All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.

Gospel
Jn 1:19-28

This is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to him
to ask him, "Who are you?"
He admitted and did not deny it, but admitted,
"I am not the Christ."
So they asked him,
"What are you then? Are you Elijah?"
And he said, "I am not."
"Are you the Prophet?"
He answered, "No."
So they said to him,
"Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?"
He said:
"I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,'
as Isaiah the prophet said."
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
"Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?"
John answered them,
"I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie."
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.

The Word Among Us

Thursday, January 02, 2003

Meditation
1 John 2:22-28

Could John have repeated this word more times in this passage? How vital it is that we learn the secret of abiding with Jesus—of staying with him at all times. John explained that “the anointing” (baptism) we “received from him abides” in us (1 John 2:27). What sweet times of prayer we can enjoy as we come to understand that Jesus actually lives in us! What a wonderful sense of his presence we receive when we understand by revelation that we are sons and daughters of God!

In your daily responsibilities, do you remember to seek out your Savior? Do you sense his warm presence in times of solitude and prayer? As you move through the duties of your day? John explained that Jesus is so real and so tangible that we should almost be able to feel his touch or hear the sound of his voice. His whisper of love and encouragement should overshadow our hearts. The Scriptures should come to life within us, filling us with joy and revelation.

Sometimes, we may feel that our connection to Jesus “slips.” Perhaps we have allowed the pressures of daily life to wear us down and rob us of our trust in his presence. Perhaps, as we face hardships or persecution, we ask ourselves, “Where is God in all of this?” But Jesus never leaves us. He is calling us to a deeper faith, a deeper abandonment to him. As we experiment with our faith in him, we begin to understand his love on a much deeper plane.

More than an uplifting emotional experience, abiding in Jesus means that we accept by faith that he has poured his Holy Spirit into us. There is never a time that he leaves us—never a time when he does not abide in us. The more that we trust in this truth, the more we will recall and stake our lives on his love during our days. Whenever you feel separated from God, ask him to reveal his presence in your heart. Remind yourself that Jesus will never leave your side. He never forgets his “steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 98:3).

“Lord Jesus, I trust that you are with me. In faith and love, I surrender myself to your will. I proclaim in faith that you will never leave me. How faithful you are, Jesus!”

From: 1 John 2:22-28

Not Listening to Heretics (Continuation)

[22] Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This
is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. [23] No one
who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the
Father also. [24] Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.
If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide
in the Son and in the Father. [25] And this is what he has promised us,
eternal life.

[26] I write this to you about those who would deceive you; [27] but
the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have
no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you
about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught
you, abide in him.

[28] And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we
may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

Commentary:

22. "Jesus is the Christ": this is a basic truth of Christian faith. As
in most of St John's writings, this wording means not only that Jesus
is the Messiah but also that he is the Son of God (cf. Jn 20:31). From
the earliest days of Christianity faith in Jesus, which included both
his messiahship and his divinity, could be expressed by applying to him
the titles of "Messiah" and "Son of God", or simply one or other of
those titles. Over the course of the centuries the Church has been
developing and deepening its understanding of revealed truths about
Christ--partly in reaction to heresies attacking that truth. In recent
years also the Magisterium has taken issue with erroneous ideas: "The
opinions according to which it has not been revealed and made known to
us that the Son of God subsists from all eternity in the mystery of the
Godhead, distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, are in open
conflict with this belief likewise the opinions according to which the
notion is to be abandoned of the one person of Jesus Christ begotten in
his divinity of the Father before all the ages and begotten in his
humanity of the Virgin Mary in time; and lastly the assertion that the
humanity of Christ existed not as being assumed into the eternal person
of the Son of God but existed rather of itself as a person, and
therefore that the mystery of Jesus Christ consists only in the fact
that God, in revealing himself, was present in the highest degree in
the human person Jesus.

"Those who think in this way are far removed from the true belief in
Christ, even when they maintain that the special presence of God in
Jesus results in his being the supreme and final expression of divine
Revelation. Nor do they come back to the true belief in the divinity of
Christ by adding that Jesus can be called God by reason of the fact
that in what they call his human person God is supremely present"
(SCDF, "Mysterium Filii Dei", 3).

23. "Has the Father": a very graphic way of referring to union with God
(cf. 2 Jn 9). St John, who has other ways of saying the same thing--for
example, "knowing him" (1 Jn 2:3f; Jn 14:7); "seeing him" (Jn 14:7, 9)
--may have had in mind the errors of the Gnostics, who held that union
with God was attained through a special kind of knowledge (gnosis),
available only to initiates of their sect. The Apostle repeats the
teaching given in his Gospel: only through Christ, through faith in him,
can one attain union with and knowledge of the Father (cf. Jn 1:18;
14:9-10); Jesus and the Father are one, only God (Jn 14:11). So, faith
in Christ is inseparable from faith in the Blessed Trinity; so, too,
denial of the Son's divinity involves rejection of the Father. "Once
the mystery of the divine and eternal person of Christ the Son of God
is abandoned, the truth respecting the Most Holy Trinity is also
undermined" (SCDF, "Mysterium Filii Dei", 4).

27. The anointing (cf. note on 2:20) refers to the Holy Spirit, who
acts on the faithful by instructing them "about everything". Our Lord
had said this would be so: "the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things" (Jn 14:26).

The Apostle does not mean that the faithful have no need of the
Magisterium of the Church (the very fact that he is writing to them
shows otherwise); what he wants to make quite clear is that their true
teacher is the Holy Spirit (he it is who guides the Magisterium in its
teaching, and he also acts in the soul of the Christian, helping him or
her to accept that teaching). "If his anointing teaches you everything,
it seems that we [pastors] are toiling to no purpose; why so much
shouting on our part [...]? This is the marvelous thing. The sound of
our words is striking your ears, but the Master is within. Do not think
that it is a question of somebody learning from a man; we can attract
your attention by the power of our voice, but if he who does the
teaching is not within, all our sermons will be in vain" (St Augustine,
"In Epist. Ioann. Ad Parthos", 3, 13).

28-29. These two verses sum up what has gone before and also act as an
introduction to a passage on divine filiation. The central idea which
St John has been repeating--"abide in him"--now opens out on to the
prospect of the Last Judgment: Jesus Christ, who will be our Judge, is
the same person as gave us revelation and life. This is one of the
foundations of Christian hope.

"We may have confidence": the sacred writer changes to the plural, to
include himself: we all have to give an account of our actions and we
should have confidence in Christ our Judge. The word translated as
"confidence" is much richer in Greek than in English; it is the
equivalent of freedom, frankness, confident audacity. "It will be a
great thing at the hour of death", St Teresa of Avila writes, "to
realize that we shall be judged by One whom we have loved above all
things [...]. Once our debts have been paid we shall be able to walk
in safety. We shall not be going into a foreign land, but into our own
country, for it belongs to him whom we have loved so truly and who
himself loves us" ("Way of Perfection", 40, 8).

Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.

From: John 1:19-28

The Witness of John

[19] And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and
Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" [20] He confessed,
he did not deny, but confessed, "I am not the Christ." [21] And they
asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are
you the prophet?" And he answered, "No." [22] They said to him then,
"Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do
you say about yourself?" [23] He said, "I am the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, `Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet
Isaiah said."

[24] Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. [25] They asked him,
"Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah,
nor the prophet?" [26] John answered, "I baptize with water; but among
you stands One whom you do not know, [27] even He who comes after me,
the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie." [28] This took
place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

Commentary:

19-34. This passage forms a unity, beginning and ending with reference
to the Baptist's "testimony": it thereby emphasizes the mission given
him by God to bear witness, by his life and preaching, to Jesus as the
Messiah and Son of God. The Precursor exhorts people to do penance and
he practices the austerity he preaches; he points Jesus out as the Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world; and he proclaims him boldly
in the face of the Jewish authorities. He is an example to us of the
fortitude with which we should confess Christ: "All Christians by the
example of their lives and the witness of the word, wherever they live,
have an obligation to manifest the new man which the put on in Baptism"
(Vatican II, "Ad Gentes", 11).

19-24. In this setting of intense expectation of the imminent coming of
the Messiah, the Baptist is a personality with enormous prestige, as is
shown by the fact that the Jewish authorities send qualified people
(priests and Levites from Jerusalem) to ask him if he is the Messiah.

John's great humility should be noted: he is quick to tell his
questioners: "I am not the Christ". He sees himself as someone
insignificant compared with our Lord: "I am not worthy to untie the
thong of His sandal" (verse 27). He places all his prestige at the
service of his mission as precursor of the Messiah and, leaving himself
completely to one side, he asserts that "He must increase, but I must
decrease" (John 3:30).

25-26. "Baptize": this originally meant to submerge in water, to
bathe. For the Jews the rite of immersion meant legal purification of
those who had contracted some impurity under the Law. Baptism was also
used as a rite for the incorporation of Gentile proselytes into the
Jewish people. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there is mention of a baptism
as a rite of initiation and purification into the Jewish Qumran
community, which existed in our Lord's time.

John's baptism laid marked stress on interior conversion. His words of
exhortation and the person's humble recognition of his sins prepared
people to receive Christ's grace: it was a very efficacious rite of
penance, preparing the people for the coming of the Messiah, and it
fulfilled the prophecies that spoke precisely of a cleansing by water
prior to the coming of the Kingdom of God in the messianic times (cf.
Zechariah 13:1; Ezekiel 36:25; 37-23; Jeremiah 4:14). John's baptism,
however, had no power to cleanse the soul of sins, as Christian Baptism
does (cf. Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:4).

"One whom you do not know": Jesus had not yet publicly revealed Himself
as Messiah and Son of God; although some people did know as a man, St.
John the Baptist could assert that really they did not know Him.

27. The Baptist declares Christ's importance by comparing himself to a
slave undoing the laces of his master's sandals. If we want to
approach Christ, whom St. John heralds, we need to imitate the
Baptist. As St. Augustine says: "He who imitates the humility of the
Precursor will understand these words. [...] John's greatest merit, my
brethren, is this act of humility" ("In Ioann. Evang.", 4, 7).

28. This is a reference to the town of Bethany which was situated on
the eastern bank of the Jordan, across from Jericho--different from the
Bethany where Lazarus and his family lived, near Jerusalem (cf. John
11:18).

One Bread, One Body

<< Thursday, January 2, 2003 >>

St. Basil the Great
St. Gregory Nazianzen

1 John 2:22-28

Psalm 98

John 1:19-28

View Readings

LET ME SEE YOUR I. D.

“No one who denies the Son has the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.” —1 John 2:23

When John the Baptist was asked: “Who are you?” (Jn 1:19), he identified himself according to his relationship to Christ (see Jn 1:23ff). We too are frequently questioned concerning our identity. People say or at least think: “Who do you think you are?” or “Who are you to tell me what to do?” Like John, we should identify ourselves according to our relationship to Christ. We should see ourselves first of all as “Christians,” disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our heritage, marriage, occupation, wealth, or fame are not nearly so important as the fact that we as Christians have been baptized into Christ.

Therefore:

Live always and fully your Baptism into Christ.
Fix your eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:2).
“Know nothing...except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).
Speak clearly, unequivocally, and increasingly of Jesus Christ (Church in America, Pope John Paul II, 66-67).
Acknowledge Jesus publicly (Mt 10:32) and never give Jesus the “silent treatment” (see Lk 22:57ff).

Fill your life, family, church, neighborhood, and city with the proclamation of the name Jesus.

Prayer: Father, make this the year of Jesus in my life.

Promise: “This is the promise that He made us: eternal life.” —1 Jn 2:25

Praise: St. Basil lived his Baptism fully by being a champion of the Church’s liberty in the face of secular pressures.

Catholic Online Saints

St. Basil the Great
d. 379 Feastday: January 2

Patron of hospital administrators

St. Basil the Great was born at Caesarea of Cappadocia in 330. He was one of ten children of St. Basil the Elder and St. Emmelia. Several of his brothers and sisters are honored among the saints. He attended school in Caesarea, as well as Constantinople and Athens, where he became acquainted with St. Gregory Nazianzen in 352. A little later, he opened a school of oratory in Caesarea and practiced law. Eventually he decided to become a monk and found a monastery in Pontus which he directed for five years. He wrote a famous monastic rule which has proved the most lasting of those in the East.

After founding several other monasteries, he was ordained and, in 370, made bishop of Caesaria. In this post until his death in 379, he continued to be a man of vast learning and constant activity, genuine eloquence and immense charity. This earned for him the title of "Great" during his life and Doctor of the Church after his death.

Basil was one of the giants of the early Church. He was responsible for the victory of Nicene orthodoxy over Arianism in the Byzantine East, and the denunciation of Arianism at the Council of Constantinople in 381-82 was in large measure due to his efforts.

Basil fought simony, aided the victims of drought and famine, strove for a better clergy, insisted on a rigid clerical discipline, fearlessly denounced evil wherever he detected it, and excommunicated those involved in the widespread prostitution traffic in Cappadocia.

He was learned, accomplished in statesmanship, a man of great personal holiness, and one of the great orators of Christianity. His feast day is January 2.

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