Two becoming one in Christ Jesus

What a promise in Ephesians 2: 12-22,  today’s first reading, namely that  all those who were once “without Christ, alienated from the community…and strangers to the covenants of promise (the old covenant given to the people through Moses and the new covenant given through Christ), those of us “without hope and without God in this world” are now one with Christ and thus one with each other and with all persons. Christ, Paul tells us, is our peace. He made both covenants one and “broke down the dividing wall of enmity”—a wall Satan tries to erect between us and God and  a wall  which the law with its legal claims creates between peoples of all cultures. On the other hand, Christ, the New Israel,  creates “in himself one new person,” reconciling the two covenants, “with God, in one Body, through the cross, putting that enmity to death by it. “He came  and preached peace to…[us] who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him, …[all of us, those of the old covenant and those of the new, both Jews and Gentiles] have access in one Spirit to the Father. All of us are “fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of [both] the Apostles and [the] prophets [of old], with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

Our faith may be sorely tested as we await the creation of this new person, of this sacred temple, of two becoming one. We look around the world and even within our own space, within ourselves, and witness enmity, divisiveness, opposing “covenants” and  laws imposed upon persons of cultures different from our own that seem to  totally violate the rights of its people.  We then find ourselves slow to believe the promises Paul speaks of in this reading.

I do know, however, that God speaks to my heart in what Paul is preaching. What am I doing to reconcile myself with opposition within my very being, between my thoughts and my will, between my ego and my spirit. What am I doing to be a reconciling presence in my community, my family, my parish?     And in what way, each day, do I allow God to do what God needs to do so that I am growing into a temple sacred to the Lord?