Anticipated Messiah

Fr Richard Healey reflects on the themes of hope, redemption, and gratitude as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. He draws parallels between the chaos in ancient stories and our own lives, highlighting how God’s grace brings resolution and freedom. Fr Richard speaks to both long-time believers and new converts, reminding us of our shared identity as adopted children of God. He encourages us to make resolutions, such as arriving at mass on time, and to embrace the transformative power of faith. Through Mary, the mother of God, we see the fulfilment of divine promise and the invitation to a renewed life in Christ.

00:00:00 So we gather on this eighth day, this eighth day, after the celebration of the birth, the Nativity of Jesus. This eighth day, when we realize that all of those dreams and hopes were all finally kind of coming together. Sometimes, you know, we read a story, particularly some of the the older stories and the characters kind of go through the different situations that they find themselves in, and they just seem to continue to get in more and more of a mess as the story goes on, and you kind of wondering, where on earth is the author going to pluck out any kind of rescue for these characters? The story just seems to be unraveling, and everything just seems to be going from worse to worse. How can anything good ever come out of of this? And you know, we always wanting that happy story to come to an end. We want that conclusion to be there, you know, and sometimes suddenly there’s this old uncle that they didn’t even know about who’s died and, and left them an inheritance.

00:01:08 And they’re able to solve all of that, or perhaps they win the lotto or some other kind of resolution. You think, you know, it’s a it’s a resolution, but it’s not terribly satisfying. But in lots of ways, you know, it doesn’t really matter where we get to when Paul begins this section of Galatians, he’s telling us that we were slaves. We’d been lost in that condition of slavery. There was no experience of freedom at all. We were so bound by by all of that. And yet they’ve all come to this same place of freedom, of being adopted as children. And Paul, of course, was writing to very two very different audiences, people that were Jewish, people that had experienced all of that longing from their childhood, people who had experienced that whole encounter with the Lord through the law, through the covenant. And they’d found freedom in the name of Jesus. And then the Gentiles, those who had had never had any of those experiences and suddenly later in life, had been able to experience the gift of God’s grace and life.

00:02:23 You know, I walked to Mass this morning. Anyone else walked to Mass today? A couple of you. Some of you drove from just around the corner, some from across the other side of Campbeltown. Some of you who have come from other suburbs and have been on a longer journey to get here. And yet we all find ourselves here in this space, or find ourselves in this possibility of encountering. And remember, it’s never too late to make a New Year’s resolution. So perhaps some of you might want to be encouraged to make a New Year’s resolution to be at Mass on time! That would be a really wonderful thing to do. But of course, we know that all sorts of things happen along the way. That experience of not being able to know exactly how things are going to shape up. But in the midst of that, the Lord is always inviting us into freedom. Paul understands that what happened in the birth of Jesus was this. That when the Messiah came, that longed for Redeemer, just as Moses had led the people from the slavery of Egypt into the freedom of the Promised Land.

00:03:41 So also Jesus does the same. He brings this new life, this new possibility, this new grace, this opportunity. And so today we are able to give thanks that in Mary we see someone who was part of that tradition, part of that covenant community, part of that family who had longed for the Messiah to come. And then she was able to bear him within her own woman, the very mother, therefore, not just of Jesus the human, but Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the divine. So she becomes for us the Mother of God becomes for us that sign of contradiction. You know, how can God have a mother? And yet in Mary we see that sign and that example. So we continue to give thanks that wherever we’ve come from, wherever we will go today on our journey, the Lord is always inviting us back into this sacred place, back into this encounter, back into a place where we can be redeemed as no longer slaves. But now, as we become indeed the adopted children of God.