December 14, 2006 (L3) Glycine

Glycine - the Proclamation of the Kingdom (L3)

December 14, 2006

This mystery has a most unusual character. In fact, it is the only mystery which is just about a "wild card" - that is, one can consider just about any event or action in the life of Jesus from just after Cana until the Transfiguration (which is a kind of prelude to the Passion and Holy Week, regardless of its precise chronological position). Some people seem to focus on the Sermon on the Mount; but there is nothing to prevent considering a parable, or any of the numerous healings, or the multiplication of loaves and fishes, or the walking on the water - or the stilling of the storm - or the instruction on the Eucharist - or the debates with the Pharisees, and lawyers, and Sadducees - or the cleansing of the Temple... Just about anything from perhaps 3/4 of the Gospels can fit here.

There is an amino acid which, in a strange sense, is just like that. It is hard to characterize simply, if at all - because it is very simple. It is the smallest and lightest - its side chain is just one hydrogen atom.



Glycine (abbreviated Gly or G)
RNA Codes:


G G A
G G G
G G U
G G C


Glycine has four codes, all of which begin with GG (it has a wobble base in the third place). Even though Glycine is classed as non-polar (hydrophobic) I have selected it for L3 because of its remarkably simple characterization.

You will recall that I said the Luminous Mysteries might also be called "The Mysteries of Water". While clearly not every evet of the Public Life of our Lord has such a connotation, there are enough that a list is easy to give:
1. the calming of the storm
2. the walking on the water (and Peter, too)
3. the calling of the pairs of fishermen-brothers as apostles
4. preaching from the boat
5. the miraculous catches of fish - Peter: "depart from me O Lord, I am a sinful man")
6. the "neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi" - Jaki's And On This Rock explains that this is one of the sources of the Jordan River
7. the Samaritan woman at the well: "If you knew Who was asking, you would ask Him to give you living water"
8. "anyone who gives so much as a cup of cold water in My Name to a disciple..."
9. "Go and wash in the pool of Siloam"
10. the Rich Man: "tell Lazarus to bring me just a drop of water"

That's a decade's worth right there, and that is without consulting a concordance. How often the Jordan is in view, or an issue about purifying (washing hands, etc) or some tangential hint of the amazing fluid of life...

Yes, there are others, too - but they come into other mysteries. There is a unity here, which one would expect from the same Designer Who gave us these hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids!!!