1st Reading: Isaiah 60: 1-6
Gospel: Matthew 2: 1 – 12
Intro: Mike Messinger
In our planning, we reflected on light, color and revelation in nature. Plants absorb light and convert (it) to energy through photosynthesis. Red flowers absorb green and blue light and reflect red light to attract pollinators. Some Purple flowers have physical structures, thin layers and parallel lines, that diffract light with greater intensity. And what color is depends on us. How our eyes perceive it. Our eyes only see visible light, a small fraction of the wide spectrum of radiant energy around us.
Reflection: Catherine Maresca
Light. This first image of God in creation is affirmed, deepened, repeated, and enriched throughout the books of the Bible, in our liturgical signs, our daily lives, and threaded today into our two readings. At the summer solstice light grabbed me once again in a short physics lesson – which Mike shared with us today.
What grabbed my attention was the dynamic interplay between light and plants. I’ve known about photosynthesis for years and years but never saw myself in that kind of dynamic with God, our light and life. But that summer day I began to imagine myself like cells of a plant responding to light, rather than like a mirror that reflects light, largely unaffected. And in that interplay between God, the light, and myself, God’s light became more than a guide, more than a comfort, more than a source of energy. God is not just changing what I do and where I go and how I feel. God is changing who I am. And I have come to long for and to give myself to the change in me God’s light can create. To sense throughout myself a response to God at my most basic level of being.
Part of this lesson is about color, which is one of my favorite things. The light that strikes the plant is uniform and complete, but the interaction between that light and the plant yields a specific color, one among millions of possibilities, for others to see. The gift that each of us becomes for one another, and for the world, is also specific to the interaction between God and each one of us. This reminds us that my being and yours is important to the whole community of life, both our human communities and our eco-communities.
As I prepared for this liturgy, I began to see that this exploration of the dynamic light between God and myself and others is also Eucharistic. Plants have the ability to make light a source of life, of food, of energy. Humans do this in a different way – in the breaking of the bread of the human family throughout the world. Jesus offers us bread not only to be with us, but to change us at our most basic level of being: to become his own, risen body for the world.
Let us take a breath or two together to imagine the life of God as light and bread and breath at work in us.
Shared Community Reflections:
Turn toward the light;
Shine, for your light has come;
Rainbows and fractyls;
Moving toward the light;
Look up to see and receive;
Halted, homage;
We all absorb God’s light;
Light in terms of humanity’s unity as Pope Francis says in his intention for January;
Light gives life, God within us;
Nations shall come to YOUR light;
We spoke of being light for others…
the shammash candle in the menorah is such a light…;
Unity;
Delight;
Just as the wise men went home by a different route and
were changed by the light, we absorb and change light;
The world is a rainbow of colors;
Bleakness, delight, choice;
Need the darkness to reflect, renew ourselves so we can appreciate the LIGHT;
Lift your eyes – really see;
We see but a small spectrum. Everything we do and say impacts
the energy of the universe in some way…;
Light contrasts with darkness;
Wisdom, Compassion is Reflecting the true inner light,
Divine Goodness, of all persons;
Like plants, we absorb God’s light differently;
Light is there, but one must reach for it;
Light as a reflection and refraction;
Pandemic may bring unity and light;
We can each be a pixel;
We can be like helper candles, Shammash;
Gifts and giving..what have we given this year?;
Shine, for your light has come;
See/Sea;
Radiant, dawn;
Everyday brings the opportunity to make new choices in our lives;
Eucharist is fruit of the vine and work or human hands….
communion is chemistry and physics, light, food, energy, Transformation!;
In nature the relationship with light is uncomplicated and organic, I need
reminders to be in that organic state of relationship to light (god’s love);
Leslie shared light in abundance as she embraced her beautiful grandchild.
Meditation:
St Basil the Great (330-279) was a Byzantine bishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia, Asia Minor (modern day Turkey).
“I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator. If you see the grass of the field, think of human nature, and remember the comparison of the wise Isaiah. All flesh is grass, and all goodliness thereof is as the flowering of the field.”
“A tree is known by its fruit; a person by their deeds. A good deed is never lost; one who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and one who plants kindness gathers love.”
“Words are truly the image of the soul.”