September 24, 2020
Year A
Ecclesiastes 1:2–11
Psalm 90:3–4, 5–6, 12–13, 14 and 17bc (R. 1)
Luke 9:7–9
Who is this?
If God did not want us to seek and see his face, he would not have created us in his image and likeness. But there is one thing we fail to recognize, which is, the fact that we were created in the image and likeness of God shows that God is always with us.
We are taught in Catechesis that God created us to know him, love him and serve him. It is precisely because we are created in his image and likeness that we seek to know he who is the Truth, love he who is the Way, and serve he who is the Life.
From the first reading, it is clear that we seek to find new things under the sun, but then we are told that surely there are no new things under the sun. What! No new things under the Sun, what about the growth in civilization and technological advances.
Indeed at the glance of the technological advances we are seeing, we will doubt the statements made in the first reading. Are they not new things we are discovering? Well such a thinking is far from what the passage purport. If God whose essence is his existence and hence is existence himself (cf. Exodus 3:14), and through his Word which also possesses the same nature of God called everything into existence (cf. Genesis 1:3, John 1:1-3), and there is nothing beyond God, then there is nothing new which already God does not possess. Thus there is no new thing which is not already in existence.
In fact the Church and especially St. Augustine makes it clear that God created the Universe ex nihilo (out of nothing), and hence creation meaning bringing something out of nothing and is not what we see about technological advances where humans use things already brought into existence by God to make some technological devices.
The wonder of Herod in the gospel is very profound. "John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?" And in his wonder he sought to see him. His ears was not satisfied with hearing, he sought to see him. Eventually Herod will see Jesus Christ during Jesus's trials and we will see why he really wanted to see Jesus, to see some miracles (cf. Luke 23:8-12).
Herod wanted to see something new under the Sun, he sought for wonders and his expectations grew to the extent that when he eventually met Jesus Christ, he was disappointed to see him who he expected to be clothed in glory not worthy of his presence to the extent that he rather clothed Jesus in a rich cloak (c.f. Luke 23:11).
The miracle worker Herod sought to see when he saw him at his palace was a condemned criminal. The unfamiliar that Herod wanted to see became something familiar to him, a common criminal. Herod was not expecting his state of self-emptying but his glorious state. Just as most of us prefer a God who does not suffer. But Jesus is mostly God when he is dying on the Cross, LOVE.
When God appears very familiar to us we don't see him, perhaps this is our problem as humans, God is so close to us than our hands and feet, nearer than our own breathing, but with familiarity at play we do not see him. When we seek to define God rather than allow God to define himself to us, we see him not.
In front of all who condemned him and Herod, he was emptying himself. Jesus became nothing to teach us that, just as God created the world out of nothing, God can make something out of us if we become nothing.
This is why it was through him that the world was made. Through his nothingness state also, he redeemed the world. This is why he is the Truth our knowledge must reach, the Way our love must go and Life our service must be given.
God wants you to seek and see him, so that you will be saved, but for him to make something out of you, you must become nothing, humble yourself for there is no new thing under the Sun.
By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
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