Our Holiness and our Salvation!

In today's first reading, 2 Timothy 1: 1-3, 6-12, Paul gives Timothy, and us,  the following message:  "..I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control....He saved us and called us to a holy life, not  according to  our works but according to  his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel..."

May you and I stir into flame the gift of God given us in baptism, in our love for one another, in any of the sacraments, in prayer, in solitude, in reflection upon the Scriptures, in our being grateful and drinking in the beauty of creation and all that is in it. May this gift of God be set aflame by our efforts to erase racism, sexism and any other "ism" that blurs our vision and blocks us from being open to God hidden in all people of any color, in all animals, birds and fishes and in the universe itself. Every living being contains the Source of life, God the Creator of us all. God breathe His life into anything and anyone who exists!

Each of us is called to holiness! Our striving to be holy is a grace and whatever progress we make in being like Christ in our world is because of the gift of God given to us in baptism, confirmation, the Holy Eucharist and any other vehicle through which God's love flows into us, men and women of all races, all religions, all states of life, all cultures and nationalities on the face of this earth!

Let us remember that we are saved and made holy "not according to our works but according to [God's] own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began...."  God's work is eternal. It is continual, day and night! Our holiness and our salvation is God's plan from the beginning of the world and will persist until that day when life here is no more!

God's Immeasurable Riches

Today, in Ephesians 2:1-10, we are blessed with another one of St. Paul’s messages of God’s awesome generosity, mercy and love.  Bluntly, St. Paul tells the followers of Christ, that is, each one of us: “You, [Dorothy Ann,] were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived following the age of this world,… the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient.”  [Dorothy Ann] you “…once lived among them in the desires of [your]flesh [and of your ego], following the wishes of the flesh [and of your ego] and [your] impulses, were by nature [a child] of wrath, like the rest.” 

St. Paul puts it on the line, so to speak.  Nothing in that passage is something of which to be boastful or proud. Without redemption, you and I were a mess and in deep trouble, resistant to following the will of God and cooperating with grace. No way, however, would God allow you or me, masterpieces of His hand, His possessions, to perish, to remain “dead.”  No, says St. Paul. “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus….[Y]ou have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works,…For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”

How awesome! We live on this earth doing good that God has prepared for us do to ahead of time: everything we need to live a good life has been secured for us by a loving, caring, faithful God! Why has God done this? So that “he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Today, Lord, may my eyes, and yours, be opened to the “immeasurable riches” of God’s grace bestowed upon me “in Christ Jesus” and may I not choose death by following “the age of this world,…the [evil] spirit that is…[always] at work in the disobedient”:  the arrogant, the deceitful, the corrupt, the greedy, the unjust, the proud, the abusive  persons of our societies. And, Lord, when I do fall into Satan’s snares, may I recognize and acknowledge my failures, my sinful ways, and come to you and those I offended, asking for pardon and forgiveness.  

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?

Growing into a Temple Sacred to the Lord

Today’s first reading, Ephesians 2: 19-22 reminds us that  we“… no longer strangers or sojourners, but are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.  Through him,” we are told, “ the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him…[we] also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

That Lord is saying:     (your name),  you are no longer a stranger or an alien. You are one of the family and not an ordinary family but the family of God.  Moses spoke to God face to face, had an intimate relationship with the Lord and so, too, did all of the saints that have gone before you.  “I,” the Lord say to you and me, “have an intimate relationship with you and my heart is in anguish until you discover this intimacy, my nearness to you, my love for you and realize that I desire you above all. I gaze upon you every moment of every day with eyes of love.”

You and I, St. Paul tells us, are God’s temple, “built upon the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone…,” the one through whom  “the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord.”  All of us “are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

All of us have, perhaps, visited churches that have taken our breath away because of their beauty. And those buildings are built by human beings!  The Temple that St. Paul is talking about is being built by the Lord. It is being put together as a “dwelling place of God.”  Its beauty will far outshine the beauty of anything built by human hands. And into that Temple, every day or every week, the Son of God, Christ Jesus, says to us through the priest:  “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, happy those called to the Supper of the Lamb” and we respond: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”  Jesus enters our Temple, as He entered the Temple when he was on His way to Jerusalem and cleansed it. In Holy Communion, He does the same for the Temple into which we that we are being built.

I believe,” Lord, “help my unbelief!”                                             

Saved by Faith in Christ Jesus

In the first reading of today's liturgy, Romans 3: 21-30, St. Paul reminds us that we--Jews and Gentiles alike-- are saved by our faith in Christ Jesus, not by faith in laws or by the works we do.  Jesus is our Savior.  "God," St. Paul proclaims, "...will justify the circumcised on the basis of faith and the uncircumcised through faith."  Without exception, "all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God."  However, all have been restored to "the glory of God" by Jesus' death and resurrection, when sin was destroyed and Satan's power crushed.  God belongs to all of us--the power of the resurrection is now at work in all believers because, as today's responsorial psalm proclaims, "[w]ith the Lord, there is mercy, and fullness of redemption."  God has been victorious and all of us--Jew and Gentile, peoples of all nationalities and cultures--await the victory that will be ours, in Christ Jesus, for all eternity and that is ours, here and now,  when, on a daily basis, by grace, we overcome sin, dying to our selfishness, our pride, our hopelessness, our lust for power and control; in short our efforts to be like God, as Adam and Eve did in original sin.

May each of us know the power of the resurrection at work within our lives.  May we have the courage and the wisdom to stop long enough from frantic activity to listen in the stillness of our hearts to God quietly at work in our personal, familial, communal, civic, political, and ecclesial dimensions of the world in which we live.