The lovely Letter to the Hebrews, from which we read this Sunday, reminds us of the great and important message of the incarnation. The fact that the great God, who made and makes all things, in the heavens and here on earth, for love of human beings, made Himself one of us. One with all our limitations and temptations. Born of a human mother, a child, a teenager, a young man, sharing completely in our humanity, in order to bring humanity to perfection and save us from our own destruction.

As the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews puts it “He was tempted in every way that we are,” sexual temptations, temptations to anger, to intolerance, to cut people down to size. He was “capable of feeling our weaknesses,” fear, frustration, laziness, boredom. In the gospels a few of these are mentioned: his exhaustion at the well in Samaria, his grief at the death of his friend Lazarus. But, as he had a very human personality, he must have suffered the fears and incomprehension of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence, as well as the more complex troubles and sorrows of adulthood, not to mention the unremitting opposition of those who rejected him – all under the overarching passion for his Father and his Kingdom.

 All this would have enriched his personality still further, until he offered the whole of his humanity in obedience to his Father’s designs for our salvation on the cross of Calvary. Jesus has got the T-shirt. He knows what it’s like to be you and me, and that means I can, and you can, take your troubles, doubts, frustrations and sufferings to him. So never be afraid to do just that, he knows, and he understands, and he will HELP!        

He’s been there, he’s got the T-shirt!

Fr David Jones OLW