Dear friends,
we simply cannot end the year on a better note: being and feeling children of an awesome Father who makes us sisters and brothers to his Son, Jesus!
Happy ending.
God bless you.
By Fr Paul Sciberras

The ultimate truth

It’s an awe-instilling idea that the author of the First Letter of John in the First Reading proposes to us: the Antichrist, the rival of Christ, is not only against Christ but also against truth itself! (see vv.18.21) Furthermore, these rivals of the truth – the author speaks of them in the plural (v.18) – come from among the believers, from the Christian Community itself: “They have gone from among us, but they never really belonged to us; if they had belonged to us, they would have stayed with us. But this was to prove that not one of them belonged to us” (v.19).

The Father and the Son

What kind of truth do the rivals of Christ go against, and indeed reject? 1 John is quite clear about it: “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also (2:22-23). And that is why the rivals of Christ do not belong to the Christian Community: because they deny that the Son Jesus, the one anointed by the Father, is generated by the Father from eternity.

Father-Son-Christian Community

But the same author has also explained to us what the Christian Community is to be: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21). The Christian Community is the family of those who witness to Jesus’ presence among them as the sign of the presence of the Father in the world.

Jesus explains the Father

The same truth of the onenness between the Father and the Son Jesus – the Father is called father precisely because he has the Son, and the Son cannot be called son, if he doesn’t have a father who generated him – is expressed in today’s Gospel: “The Word was with God and the Word was God … ” (v.1). He is the only one – being the Son – who can tell and show us who the Father is: “No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (v.18).

Speak the Father to me

‘Lord Jesus, you do know I want to have an always deeper relationship with the Father! In so doing I will become always the more a son, as he, the Father, yours and mine, continues to nurture his fatherly love in me. Jesus, beloved Son of the Father, continue to fan the flame of the truth within me so that I never forget that I too am a son in you. Jesus, beloved Brother, do not get tired of speaking the Father to me, deep down in my heart, so that I can speak him to the world through my actions, my words, my very being. Amen.’