By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
Moses – he was drawn from the water, as his name suggests. While all the Hebrew newborn males were gone, one boy remained! He grew up in the palace of the very king who wanted to have him killed along with the rest of the male children. He was a bold young man when he killed a man from the dominant class, the ruling class of the society but went scot-free. He was a frightened young man when he ran away becoming aware that his act of having killed an Egyptian were not anymore a secret.
After all these events of peculiar nature, Moses realises he had been chosen all the while and specially cared for. He was saved alive from the water and he would soon walk the people to life across the waters! He was provided for at the palace and he would soon become the instrument of God’s providence to the people of Israel. He questioned the injustice meted out to a Hebrew and soon he would challenge even the Pharaoh for the same.
What Moses should be doing as God’s chosen prophet or God’s chosen leader, was already revealed to him while he was still a young man. Moses refused to be intimidated by the hegemony of the ruling class, though he was given a pseudo-identity as belonging to that class. May be we need to give the due credit to the mother of Moses, who would have nurtured him with the right understanding right from the early age. The credit that goes to Moses is his readiness to be taught, his conscientious life and his courage to stand up against the unjust system, when it mattered the most. Moses was not anymore a youngster when he was chosen to be the leader, but all the signs of that leadership was already seen when he was a young man.
And you my dear friend…
– do you feel that you are special in the eyes of the Lord? What are those experiences that make you feel so?
– are you able to make the presence of God work for your good and for the good of those around you, even in circumstances that may not be apparently growth giving.
YOU CAT
Encountering the World Made Flesh: Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Questions 71-112) We are still in the first section, I BELIEVE but we enter into the second chapter: I believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ the Son of God and Saviour is the earliest of the revelations that built up the Church. It is interesting to note in the Early Christian Ages when Christianity was still a persecuted sect, people used the symbol of the fish (which they called the Fish of Life) to secretly signify Christ. Even today we have the tradition of using the symbol of fish in the liturgical ambient.
This was so because the Greek word for fish spelt ICHTHYS and pronounced Ichthus, was an acronym for Iesus CHristus THeuos hYuos Soter (Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour). The name Jesus itself means ‘God saves’ and Christ means ‘Messiah’ or ‘the anointed one’. We take our name from Christ, as we are called ‘Christians’ and we believe that Jesus Christ was at the same time man and God, as divinity and humanity are united without division or confusion in his single personality.
This is the mystery of Incarnation. We need to beware of misunderstanding or misrepresenting Jesus as merely a man, or as God appearing to be man or as two different persons within Jesus, one divine and one human – all of these are heresies, incomplete and incorrect understanding of Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus Christ is truly and fully God and truly and fully man at one and the same time.
– How do you relate to Jesus Christ in your experience?
KNOW YOUR CHURCH:
Who is the most important person in the Church?
Do you feel like saying the Holy Father? Or the Bishops or the Teachers of the Word? None of this would be right answer, because the most important person in the Church is You. When we speak of the Holy Father, the Bishops, the priests and categories as such, we are referring to what is known as ‘the hierarchy’!
Hierarchy in a social or corporate system is a protocol where one is more important or more respected than another. Within the Church, hierarchy is not about who is more important or who is more respected – but it is about the role that is played. Some in the Church have an indispensable role to play – they are namely, the Bishops, the Priests and the Deacons as they form what is called the Ministerial Priesthood. I can hear you gasping – what about the Holy Father? The Holy Father, as the Bishop of Rome, has a crucial place in the hierarchy and an additional role among the Bishops as a brother among brothers who ensures the unity of the One Universal Church.
However this hierarchy does not make them in anyway a step higher than the rest of the Church – the religious men and women and the laity, who form the majority that is called the Royal Priesthood. Everyone is equally important and each one has a unique role to fulfill. The Church is the People of God and that definition says it all.
DO CAT
Unique and Infinitely Valuable:
(Questions 47-60) – The Human Persons: Are they so very important, and why? What is the Social Doctrine of the Church fundamentally based on? What is the need of a society? Why should a person be just towards another in a society? Human persons are Imago Dei – that is the human beings bear the image and likeness of God and they have the gift of communicating and relating to God. No person can be by himself or herself. We grow in interdependence.
Family is the primordial cell of every society and in a family man and woman possess same dignity and grow in complementarity. Human being is at the same time material and spiritual, and is capable of transcendence as a specific and unique capability. Hence a just society should respect and promote the dignity of the human person, ruling out any form of exploitation and instrumentalisation for any reason whatsoever – political or social or economic or any other.
God created human beings in God’s own image and therefore there are no fundamental differences in human persons in their dignity, sex, nationality, religion or the colour of the skin! Freedom is a fundamental value that a human person is endowed with – Freedom from (the external freedom from control); Freedom To (the possibility to make choices); Freedom For (inner freedom to choose good on one’s own). God who in the depths of one’s inner life is communion and relationship by free choice.
– How mindful are you about the fact that you are unique and infinitely valuable, because you are made of God’s image and likeness?
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.