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Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons 26 January 2014


Sunrise on the Sea of Galilee

Sunrise on the Sea of Galilee

January 26th Third Sunday in Ordinary Time year A

Despite it still being the middle of British Winter those of us used to the grey dismal days may find a slight shift in the quality of the light, it’s not much and may even be fanciful imaginings, but once we move into `January’ there is a real sense that the daylight hours are lengthening, light is coming again! For us, Isaiah’s words ring true, gloom is dispelled, a yoke of heaviness is lifted from those who suffer in this season, new light is dawning.

I hope you are one of those people who can link the dawn and dark to these passages of scripture, it makes them come alive and allows them to touch and speak to us in our different moods and moments of hope and joy, sadness and depression. After John has been arrested by Herod, Matthew tells us Jesus goes to live by the sea in Capernaum. There’ a real link here, the light of the World is not only fulfilling Isaiah’s words by being in that land of prophecy, but is in a sense identifying and living with that special light you can only find when land and sea connect. It’s a glimpse of heaven and earth coming together, a place of yearning, expectation, change and light. The artist Turner knew this so well which is why his paintings of seascapes have such great power!

Somehow the fact that Jesus called his first disciples from the sea, two sets of working brother fishermen, hints at the revolutionary power of the Kingdom he comes to preach but also gives a glimpse of who he is too, the God who deals with ordinary people, their world and lives! His Kingdom is one where we are called to reconcile divisions, ask for sins’ forgiveness, reaching out to others in care , healing and curing the hurts and sorrows of the children of God.

But it’s more than that, we are charged with the task of proclaiming and preaching Christ , not ourselves or Paul or Peter, to try and live in harmony with each other. It can be done, it has to be done by people such as us, for the world has need of our good news of salvation so that the people who still walk in darkness may see a great light!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.

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