4 Jan 2024
Behold!
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For 4 January 2024, The Memorial of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, based on John 1:35-42
John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).
Scripture passage from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
04 January 2024 @ 2:56 pm
“The act of beholding or being beheld”…a magnificently musical musing that does make the heart sing as did this entire homily! Also, as you said to stop there in the reading where we “Behold” because there is so much there to contemplate, I wanted to just add the Hebrew word “dayenu”: in Hebrew means “It was {is} enough for us.” As you claim,
it is enough for us to consider the meaning of the Lamb of God, to behold what that means to us and what it is we are looking for by drawing near to Jesus.
I wonder, too, and want to ask you, Ann Garrido, what did you behold in the scriptures or in Jesus, that caused you to follow Him? It seems from your homily, “Lamb of God,” might not have made enough sense to have the same attraction as it did for the two individuals that were immediately drawn near. But I’m just curious, what drew you near? What did you behold??!! Is there a particular verse, story or experience? Please share in a future opportunity if you get the chance! Thank you
05 January 2024 @ 12:36 am
Deeply grateful for your beautiful words and insight…and I echo “dayenu”…enough to ponder for the rest of the year.
05 January 2024 @ 2:07 am
Thank you.
05 January 2024 @ 6:40 am
What a lovely homily. It has me thinking that perhaps the only way to experience ourselves being beheld by Jesus starts with a genuine attempt to behold Him first.
05 January 2024 @ 7:41 am
I don’t usually post replies to comments, though I do read them! But today’s comments were so substantive, that I feel like I should 🙂 Plus, “dayenu” is one of my favorite words.
Wayne raises something that I want to think about more, because I tend to think that as a child perhaps I had the experience of “being beheld” perhaps before I was conscious of “beholding” – i.e. the sense of being called by God before really knowing who God was. But as an adult, knowing Christ as the Good Shepherd and as the True Vine have certainly been very important images for me. Also I did the 30 days Ignatian exercises a couple years back and that was when the notion of “beholding” itself first began to take root for me. The exercises were amazing. But, I am going to need to keep thinking about this question! It is a good one!
Jane’s pondering about where does the “beholding” start is one that I’ve also sat with, though maybe ended up in a different place on. I think maybe because of my childhood experience (mentioned above) and then also study of the theology of covenant, I’ve come to think of maybe God as the one who does the beholding first – i.e. it always starts with God, and then us waking up to the reality that there is someone looking at us with love before we ever realized it. But I’ll have to ponder this more, too!
Thank you for taking the time to comment!
14 January 2024 @ 8:17 am
This was wonderful, I will listen again..the dialogue of Jesus in this chapter of John has caught my attention for the last 44 years.