2nd Sunday Reflection
(CNS photo/Mihoko Owada, Catholic Standard)
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1)
Sometimes a soft caressing secret whisper, “you are… My beloved”; sometimes a public acclamation, “you are the rock upon which I will build my church”, but always a new name given, a particular essential identity that sets me on a different course towards communion of fellowship.
A higher power that speaks in its own secret name of authority, “I create what I Am”, renaming me, calling me to a new identity and destiny, aligning me within the fabric of the divine order.
From the beginning, from the Genesis, it is God’s Word that names creation to differentiate, to bring order and to bind chaos. Then follows God’s gift to us, sharing in the naming, sharing in the ongoing work of redemption that is the work of creation.
As Abram is renamed Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Jedediah to Solomon, Saul to Paul, and in today’s reading Peter becomes Cephas: moving from tribe to people, from people to a nation, from nation to the church and then becoming the Kingdom of God.
This kingdom of God is the final revelation of Emanuel, ‘God with us’, the face of God revealed within human history, ever reflecting the identity of God in this age and in the realm of the transcendent beyond space and time.
This ultimate communion of fellowship is the taste of the mystic life, a radical surrender of self to that loving embrace of the Other, the union that connects us also to all things and to everything that emanates from God’s Word.
From God’s Word, from Scripture, the transformative and mystical creative power resonates beyond the world of the Academy, deterministic and literal, to become something translucent and beautiful.
This is our living connection to the mystical hermeneutic dialectic of our inner history, constantly transformed and revitalised to provide meaning for life, even in the midst darkest chaos.
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