26 March 2021
Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
I can remember the excitement of my first paycheck from my first job. I beamed with pride that I had financial independence from my parents (in my mind at least, not in actual fact). I finally earned something that was my mine, and I did not owe it to another person’s generosity. Maybe you were similar to me. I bristled at my dependence on my parents as I grew up in my teenage years. I was indoctrinated in the American sense of freedom, especially the freedom to get to do what one wants and freedom from interference.
Jesus offers us a model for grounding our identity on a stance of reception. Jesus receives everything he has from the Father. His dependence is not a fact about him of which he despairs or decreases his sense of dignity. Instead, his dependence as a Son of the Father leads him to recognize his reliance on God, and potentially gratitude for receiving everything from the Father. With the giftedness of his being, we also see the gift of his mission which he receives from the Father. God enters into the great drama of human history in a definitive manner in Jesus. Jesus in our Gospel passage today performs the signs he was sent to perform to show the Father and his intimate relationship to the Father. Jesus reveals to all of us the meaning of being a child of God which is an identity not built on independence; rather, it is grounded in grateful reception and overflows in obedience to the mission.
We are all given the spirit of adoption through the waters of baptism that we may confidently call out to God as “Abba.” Our Christian lives present us with the task to receive evermore and greater graces from God as we go about our daily lives. We ask for and receive the love we need in order to fulfill our vocational mission whatever it might be. Truly, the only thing we can call our own are our mistakes and sins. Even then, God’s mercy continues to reach us as a gift which we do not earn.
What have been gifts you have received recently from God? Take a moment today thanking God for those gifts.