Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 306

In “subjecting” all things to him,
he left nothing not “subject to him.”
Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” 
but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor”
because he suffered death,
he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,”
that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

 

The Anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews saw clearly the authority that was given to Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Mary. And he insisted there is nothing that is not subject to him.

He could not have imagined the vision that confronts us today, an image that is like a mirror, a precise reflection of what he described, and yet altogether wrong. Geologists have begun to call our time "the Anthropocene Age," and it's definition fits entirely too well. Nothing in this world is not subject to human creativity, influence, and authority. In fact, we are looking at the world we have created, and we don't like what we see.

In his book, The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, Agustin Fuentes argues that prehistoric human beings also created themselves as they struggled to survive against enormous odds. Although they were smaller and weaker than other species of homo, they worked together like hunting wolves. Their coordinated efforts paid off as they scavenged for leftover meat, and then hunted live prey, and finally learned to cook. Over hundreds of thousands of years their brains grew larger until there was no animal remotely like them for intelligence, creativity, and coordinated action.

Having all things subject to him is an experiment that can still succeed if human beings practice the obedient reverence -- the Fear of the Lord -- which Jesus exercised throughout his life on Earth, and still maintains as our Risen Savior.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, although distinct from each other, are of one mind, heart, and will. The Son and the Spirit obey the Father even as the Father surrenders all power in heaven and on earth to the Son and the Spirit. There is authority but no domination in their relationship. Hebrews reminds us that “It was not to angels that God subjected the world,” but to the human being, Jesus. He has a deep and holy reverence for the Father and the Spirit; and he invites us to practice that same reverence.

Reverence is not parsimonious; it does not pick and choose what it regards as sacred. It bows before God, others, and the world with benevolent kindness. It is not like that fear of others that we see in stratified human societies where a sycophant grovels before superiors and sneers at subordinates. Pope Francis has shown in his encyclical Laudato Si how contempt for others also wastes natural resources.

Stories of that savage waste are too many to recount. I think of the landmines of two World Wars, still planted in Europe; of the sunken war vessels still polluting the seas, and of billions of human beings condemned to poverty while a tiny minority prosper. Without reverence we cannot live up to that quaint title the Enlightenment bestowed on us, homo sapiens, “the wise man.”

Americans have been humiliated during the past year by an epidemic that should have been manageable, and by a transfer of political power that should have been smooth. The first punishment followed inevitably upon our failure to work with other nations; the second betrays our unwillingness to work with each other. Our apparent superiority is an illusion; our impudence is palpable and patently absurd. It follows our unnatural attitudes about religion and reverence, that they can be replaced by cold, calculating reason. Which is another failed experiment!

2020 invited us to repent of our sins and turn back to the Lord. 2021 tells us we still have time, but to waste the opportunity threatens our very existence.