The
prophet Ezekiel has a vision (in Chapter 36) of a messianic future, of the restoration
of Israel, which is found in his Son,
Jesus Christ and the Church, we are those sprinkled with the clean water of
baptism, who have been cleansed. God gives us a new heart and puts his Spirit
within us, just as he did on the day of Pentecost, so we are to live as the
people of God, lled with his love, and forgiveness, and proclaiming his Truth
to the world.
This Sunday in the Gospel we are in
the middle of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, which is the summit of his teaching
just before his arrest and Passion. Christ has made God’s name known to us, we
know him in a different way, we pray to him as ‘Father’ and we are his, we are
not our own, despite the Western Liberal infatuation with personal freedom, we
are God’s, which affects who we are, and what we do.
Christ speaks to us, and teaches us so
that our joy may be complete in him, lled with his love, and the Holy Spirit.
The world’s reaction to this is a negative one: because what we are, what we
stand for, and how we live as Christians is to be opposed to what the world
around us stands for – selshness, greed, which it makes into false gods, as
though material wealth, or power, or status could save us – such things are
transient and fleeting. It offers us a short-cut, an easy road, whereas if we are
following Christ, then we are walking the way of his Passion, we are walking
the Way of the Cross, dying daily to sin, and letting God’s grace be at work in
and through us. It is not easy, it is difficult, most of us are unable to manage
on our own, we need the love and support of the Christian community to help us,
even the rst Christians, those who had been with Jesus, needed each 0ther’s
help and support, so they can continue what Jesus started.
We need to be together, to meet
together to pray for our needs and those of the world, and to be nourished by
the word of God, the Bible, and the Sacrament of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, not
because they’re something nice to do on a Sunday morning: an add-on, an optional
extra that we can opt into and out of as we feel like, but because as Christians
they are crucial to who and what we are, if we are to remain in the love of God
then we have to live this way. Only then can we offer the world an alternative
to the ways of selshness and sin. It will hate us for doing this, it will despise
us, it will call us hypocrites when we fail to live up to the example of Jesus,
but as Christians who live in the love of God we forgive each other our trespasses,
so that we can live out that same radical love and forgiveness which sees Jesus
die upon the Cross for love of us and all the world. It is a message of such
love, such forgiveness that the world cannot or does not want to understand it,
we may not understand it, but we know that it can be experienced, and we are
living testimony to its power. It turns our lives around and sets us free to
live for God and to proclaim his saving truth in our words and actions, calling
the world to repentance, to turn to Christ, and to be renewed in and through
Him.
So as we wait with the Apostles for the
gift of the Holy Spirit let us pray that God may be at work in us, building us up,
and giving us strength to live his life and to proclaim his truth, to offer the world
that which it most earnestly desires, a peace, a joy and a freedom which pass human
understanding, and the gift of eternal life in Christ.
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