Feast of St. John the Apostle

For the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life … what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.  John is very forceful in what he is proclaiming.  We are not used to such proclamations, even from the highest political authority.  In John’s time, an official proclamation bore the weight of the authority issuing it.  For us, it is someone raising their voice and pounding the table.

A proclamation is breaking news.  News that will change your life and the world you live in.  Breakthroughs in science continually change our lives.  After the breakthrough (a vaccine, the invention of a car or computer), we begin to live in a different world.  Artists, poets, and prophets break through the veneer of prosaic, matter-of-fact to let us see a deeper dimension of our lives and enable us to live differently.  Breaking news breaks open the shell of what has always been and will be, the thick opaqueness that confines us to pointless routines.  We become shackled by what is quicker and easier.

The liturgy is a proclamation of breaking news.  It is a revelation, the presence of God breaking in to our world.  It is a revelation which is the word and speech of the very self of God.  It becomes real in the response of obedience, of adoration and the surrender of love.  It is only known when it is received in the same way it is disclosed. The words bear the infinity and eternity of God’s realty into human life. Life made visible.  It is news which has to break into the isolation and alienation which form a crust of defensiveness around our lives.  Life made invisible.

Every time we are loved, it is news breaking into our life.  It is a proclamation calling us to fellowship, to communion, to koinonia.  With the Trinity and with one another.  The coming and birth of Jesus Christ is the good news breaking into history and changing the way we live. The empty tomb is the sign of God, entering humanity and creation by breaking the bonds of death and sin. I am making all things new.  Breaking news.