“My Beloved Son” by Phil Russell
Piety
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew
3:17
Study
“The Lord will bless his people with peace.” Psalm
29:11
Action
“He (JESUS) went about doing good and healing all those
oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Acts 10:38
“For God was with him....,”
By virtue of our Baptism, God is with us, too! And we are
with Him.
What are we? “Beloved.”
Each one of us anointed Prophet, Priest, King. The Children
of God, the Body of Christ!
Baptized!
Jesus submits himself to his Father’s will. This act of righteousness fulfills and leads
Jesus to Jerusalem and his suffering, death, and resurrection.
There we, too, are “called,” and Jesus says to us, “so must
you also do.”
We are beloved of The Father!
I was baptized 70 years ago.
In these years, I’ve come to a better understanding of “Beloved” by the
very virtue of my Baptism.
I opted as a parent to have my children baptized. One of the
hardest things that I had had to do as a baptized person, “beloved” of God, was
to give up my child when he died so suddenly at 27. And then, release him back
to, my Heavenly Father. At his funeral Mass of Christian Burial, I stood in the
same Church, just feet between the space where we baptized him, on that Sunday,
November 4, 1990, to this “ritual” rite of “ March 26, 2018…returning him to my
Heavenly Father...the One who had gifted me with Michael, my own “beloved Son,
in whom I was well pleased.”
There was a song playing, as Father incensed his “urn” it
was a Song called “Benedictus” by Steve Angrisano .... “our God has raised up
for us a mighty Prophet, fulfilling the promise to save his people.”
Those words of Benediction washed over me that day, words of
promise, and truth. As a “Beloved” child of God, I am/we are “called” to “Bless
his people with peace.” As we sing this day as our response to our God, in
thanksgiving for his Promise to us.
At this liturgical end of the Christmas Season, we are called
to be fully equipped as his “Beloved”!
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