The Indwelling God

In today's first reading, Acts 17: 15, 22-18:1, Paul admires the Greek's exquisite marble statues of the human body and other man-made monuments. He even notices the inscription on an altar that reads: To an Unknown God."  Paul then proceeds to proclaim to them that the "God who made the world and all that  is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made my human hands,  nor is he served by human hands  because he needs anything" from us.  God dwells in the sanctuary that each of us is, a sanctuary of life made holy by Christ Jesus.  We live and move and have our being in God and God in us. 

This God--the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit--dwells within each one of us, making us one with the Trinity and transforming us in such ways that we become one with one another, relating to each other as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to one another.  In the Trinity all are one. No one dominates the other. No one is deprived of the fullness of life that is the Trinity. All share equally in the Godhead. All give equally to one another. All render complete service to one another in order to accomplish one mission: the salvation of all humankind.

The perfection to which we are called is not of human origin. It is divine. We  are in the process of realizing that perfection from birth until death, a perfection being accomplished by the work of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus, in returning to the Father, sent to us to "guide us to all truth" (today's Gospel, John 16" 12-15). What a gift! What a  hope that make all things worth giving one's life to the point of dying. It's the essence of martyrdom. It's the essence of giving one's life in marriage to another. It's the essence of religious life and of priesthood. It's the essence of the single life lived for God!

God Wills Your Wholeness

St. Paul reminds us in today’s first reading, 1 Thes 4: 1-8, that God’s will for us is our “holiness.”  God wills our integrity, our transparency, our wholeness, our honesty, our purity, our simplicity; in short,  our sacred commitment to Truth, to Life, to  Christ--the way to the Father.  God wills that we again become childlike: innocent, awe-filled, loving and trusting, inclusive, transparent, faith-filled and hope-filled.  God desires that you and I refrain from immoral acts: acts of evil intent, malicious acts, hate-filled acts; that we refrain from deceitfulness and from all that is contrary to godliness, to loving and forgiving as God loves and forgives us.  God wills our good. 

What do you will for yourself and others?  Is your will worthy of being carried out in actuality, that is, are your actions and attitudes in sync with your innermost desires, those that come from your God-self, or are they aligned with the propensity to act contrary to God's will, to succumb to the weakness of sin that exist within each one of us?