5 January

Some of us may have been quite judgmental others just by looking at them or hearing about them. Sometimes what we see or hear could have been coloured with prejudiced eyes and ears, and unless we are open to the promptings of God's spirit, we may fail to discover and appreciate another person's character, talent and capabilities.

In today's Gospel, Nathanael did not initially have a good impression of Jesus or Nazareth. Hearing that Jesus was from Nazareth, he asked, "What good can come out of Nazareth?" He said this because Nazareth was a small, insignificant place, and to the Jews, it seemed unlikely that the Messiah would come from there. Nathanael was not despising Jesus or even Nazareth for that matter, but he was just being frank and straightforward, and Jesus recognised that in Nathanael when He said that Nathanael was incapable of deceit. Not only that, Jesus saw that Nathanael was sincere and that he awaited for the coming of the Messiah, since Nathanael was found "under the fig tree," at prayer and open to the Lord. Eventually, Nathanael was humble and open enough to recognise Jesus as the Son of God and the King of Israel.

What about us? Would we be able to see or hear without prejudice? We may have had not quite a good impression of someone initially, because of what we may heard about the person or where the person came from. Let us pray that, like Nathanael, we would eventually see the good in others, just as Jesus sees the good in each of us.

5 January

Some of us seem to be using the word love so easily without meaning it or understanding its meaning. When we say we 'love,' we may be actually saying that we 'like.' Some of us love because there is a condition, or strings attached, or there is something we can get out of it. But how many of us are able to love unconditionally, the way God loves us unconditionally? How many of us are willing and able to love those who are difficult to love, those who are our enemies?

In today's reading, we are told that refusing to love makes us murderers. The reading tells us: "This is the message as you heard it from the beginning: that we are to love one another; not to be like Cain, who belonged to the Evil One and cut his brother’s throat; cut his brother’s throat simply for this reason, that his own life was evil and his brother lived a good life. You must not be surprised, brothers, when the world hates you; we have passed out of death and into life, and of this we can be sure because we love our brothers. If you refuse to love, you must remain dead; to hate your brother is to be a murderer, and murderers, as you know, do not have eternal life in them."

When we refuse to love, we are dead to the needs of others and dead to our relationship with them. We begin to think only of ourselves and become oblivious to others. We become like murderers, since we are no longer bothered or concerned about others, and we may find ways and means to protect our image, our interests, and feed our pride and ego, even to the point of actually committing murder. This is why as Christians, we may at times be at odds with the ways of the world and the world would hate us, since the world often focuses only on the self, and others or things are merely to be used, abused, exploited and discarded. May we stay alert and be cautious not to fall into the Evil One's trap, but learn to truly love just like God truly loves all of us.