Holiness, Grace and Peace

Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

The four Gospels are quite different in what they emphasize. They are written to different audiences – Matthew especially to Jews, Mark to Romans, Luke to Gentiles or Greeks, and John to the whole world. They are written by four men with quite different personalities. There are, however, certain structured features that all four Gospels share. They all center on Jesus; they all clearly teach his divinity; they all end with his trial, passion, death, and resurrection; and they all begin by comparing Jesus to John the Baptist, the last and greatest of the prophets (according to Jesus himself).

In today’s passage from the Gospel of John, the Baptist points out the person of Jesus for whom he was sent into the world to prepare the people to receive Jesus as the Lamb of God, the one upon whom God’s Spirit rested and whom God proclaimed as his beloved one. With this final proclamation about Jesus, John’s mission comes to an end. He has faithfully done what was asked of him by God. Jesus is the one of whom Isaiah spoke in the oracle we hear today. Later on in this same Gospel, Jesus will identify himself as the light of the world, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah.

Today we also read the very beginning of the second longest letter of St. Paul in the Christian Scriptures. Though it appears to be a simple greeting like the verses that appear at the beginning of every one of his letters, it is much more than that. In fact, these verses mention the two absolutely fundamental parts of the whole Christian religion. First, St. Paul reminds us that we are all called to be holy. Then he utters a simple blessing, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Everything good comes from God as a gift: grace, beginning with our very existence, and peace, which is our end. These two gifts are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, of our whole religion – that is, are lived relationship with God.

God is our Alpha and our Omega, our beginning and our end, our source and our fulfillment. God is our Alpha: the source of everything good, whether directly as in the Eucharist, or indirectly, as in every photon of light and heat from the sun and every act of love and goodwill that we receive from our family and friends and those many people who make our lives easier and happier by growing our food and providing our education and healing our diseases and protecting us from evil and even making us laugh. God is also our Omega, our end, our ultimate purpose to which we are called. Not everyone is called to be a priest or a nun or a martyr, but everyone is called to be a saint, “called to be holy.” We are called to be like God, which means to be love, for God is love. In the Book of Leviticus, God said: “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” Through this statement, God says to each of us, “You are to be love because I, the nature of ultimate reality, am love.”

You have all heard this before. There is nothing new here. However, we need to hear it again and again because we are all incredibly absent-minded and forgetful. We all have attention deficit disorder when it comes to the Gospel. We all need to keep returning to the basics. In any art, in any sport, in life itself, the basics are essential. If we don’t have a solid foundation, no building will stand for very long. Neither will any personal character, or any marriage, or any family, or any politics, or any friendships, or any business.

These simple words of St. Paul are repeated frequently at the beginning of the celebration of the Eucharist. “Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” At the end of the Eucharist, we are sent forth with the words, “Go in Peace, glorifying the Lord through your lives.” Holiness, grace, and peace are the essentials of our Christian mission. As we continue to preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, we also continue to seek holiness and to bring grace and peace to our neighbors and our fellow believers.