himself subsists and which alone gives subsistence to all that variety of beings that enjoy life in any part of the creation.
‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.’
Now though this is a doctrine of strict justice, yet it is only a universal love that can comply with it. For as love is the measure of our acting toward ourselves, so we can never act in the same manner toward other people till we look upon them with that love with which we look upon ourselves.
Friday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from The Go-Between God by John V. Taylor
What was Jesus Christ’s role and relationship to the world? He came to be true Man, the last Adam, living the life of the new age in the midst of the world’s life. His deliverance of men and women from various kinds of bondage, his existence for others, the laying down of his life, were not a task which he undertook but a function of the life of the new Man, just as breathing or eating is a function of physical life. What made his preaching of the kingdom of God distinct from that of John the Baptist was that he not only promised but lived the kingdom life. That is why he said that the least of those in the kingdom was greater than John. And kingdom life is not primarily religious but human.
Jesus’s parables make it clear that life in the kingdom is the normal life that is open to humanity where men and women are found in his true relation to God as son – the Abba-relationship. So the thirty years of hidden toil at Nazareth were to him not a mere passing of the time but were the very life of Man he had come to live. There he learned to say ‘My Father has never yet ceased his work and I am working too,’ and by virtue of his absolute, glad obedience-in-co-operation, Jesus as Man was able to be the vehicle of God’s existence for others, as all people were potentially made to be. ‘If it is by the finger of God that I drive out the devils, then be sure that the kingdom of God has already come upon you.’
But the ‘you’ upon whom the kingdom has come are not people in the Church but people in the world. To say ‘Jesus is Lord’ pledges us to find the effects of his cross and resurrection in the world, not just in our inner lives, nor in the Church.
The way in which Jesus both declared the kingdom and lived in the freedom of the kingdom provides the model of what the Church is created to be. The Church is not the kingdom but, through the Spirit indwelling their fellowship, Christians live the kingdom life as men and women of the world.
The mission of the Church, therefore, is to live the ordinary life of human beings in that extraordinary awareness of the other and self-sacrifice for the other which the Spirit gives. Christian activity will be very largely the same as the world’s activity – earning a living, bringing up a family, making friends, having fun, celebrating occasions, farming, manufacturing, trading, building cities, healing sickness, alleviating distress, mourning, studying, exploring, making music, and so on. Christians will try to do these things to the glory of God, which is to say that they will try to perceive what God is up to in each of these manifold activities and will seek to do it with him by bearing responsibility for the selves of others.
Saturday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from a sermon of Peter Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna
God, seeing the world falling into ruin through fear, never stops working to bring it back into being through love, inviting it back by grace, holding it firm by charity, and embracing it with affection.
God washes the earth, steeped in evil, with the avenging flood. He calls Noah the father of a new world, speaks gently to him and encourages him. He gives him fatherly instruction about the present and consoles him with good hope about the future. He did not give orders, but instead shared in the work of enclosing together in the ark all living creatures on the earth. In this way the love of being together would drive out the fear born of slavery. What had been saved by a shared enterprise was now to be preserved by a community of love.
This is the reason, too, why God calls Abraham from among the nations and makes his name great. He makes him the father of those who believe, accompanies him on his journeys, and takes care of him amid foreigners. He enriches him with possessions, honours him with triumphs, and binds himself to Abraham with promises. He snatches him from harm, is hospitable to him, and astonishes him with the gift of a son he had given up hope of ever having. All this God does so that, filled with many good things, and drawn by the sweetness of divine love, Abraham might learn to love God and not to be afraid of him, to worship him in love rather than in trembling fear.
This is the reason, too, why God comforts the fugitive Jacob as he sleeps. On his way back he calls him to the contest and wrestles with him in his arms. Again, this was to teach him to love and not to fear the father of the contest.
This is why God invites Moses to be the liberator of his people, calling him with a fatherly voice and speaking to him with a fatherly voice.
All the events we are recalling reveal the human heart fired with the flame of the love of God, senses flooded to the point of intoxication with that love, leading people on, until wounded by love they begin to want to look upon the face of God with their bodily eyes.
How could the narrowness of human vision ever enclose God whom the entire world cannot contain? The law of love has no thought about what might be, what ought to be or what can be. Love knows nothing of judgement, reaches beyond reason, and laughs at moderation. Love takes no relief from the fact that the object of its desire is beyond possibility, nor is it dissuaded by difficulties. If love does not attain what it desires it kills the lover, with the result that it will go where it is led, not where it ought to go. Love breeds a desire so strong as to make its way into forbidden territory. Love cannot bear not to catch sight of what it longs for. That is why the saints thought that they merited nothing if they could not see the Lord. It is why love that longs to see God has a spirit of devotion, even if it lacks judgement. It is why Moses dares to say to God: ‘If I have found favour in your sight, show me your face.’
It is also why God, aware that people were suffering pain and weariness from their longing to see him, chose as a means to make himself visible, something which was to be great to the dwellers on earth, and by no means insignificant to the dwellers in heaven. He chose to come to humankind as a human being, assuming our nature, in order to be seen by us.
The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
A Reading from a sermon of Leo the Great
Our Lord Jesus Christ, born truly human without ever ceasing to be true God, was in his own person the prelude of a new creation, and by the manner of his birth he gave humanity a spiritual origin. What mind can grasp this? What tongue can do justice to this gift of love? Guilt becomes innocence, what was old becomes new, strangers are adopted into the family and outsiders are made heirs.
Rouse yourself, therefore, and recognise the dignity of your nature. Remember that you were made in God’s image; and though defaced in Adam, that image has now been restored in Christ. Use this visible creation as it should be used: the earth, the sea, the sky, the air, the springs and rivers. Give praise and glory to their Creator for all that you find beautiful and wonderful in them. See with your bodily eyes the sunlight shining upon the earth, but embrace with your whole soul and all your affections ‘the true light which enlightens everyone who comes into this world’. Speaking of this light the prophet David in the psalms says: ‘Look on him and be radiant; and your face shall never be ashamed.’ If we are indeed the temple of God and if the Spirit of God lives in us, then what every believer has within is of greater worth than what we can admire in the skies.
My friends, in saying this it is not my intention to make
