We've been speaking about ways to come to know God and our natural openess to God's revelation. Along with that, the profound desires of the human heart tell us that there is something great that we are called to, a fulfillment that awaits all of us.
In last week's general audience, Pope Benedict XVI began unfolding the "benevolent design" of the economy of salvation. "Economy" here is meant as management of a household or family; a plan or dispensation, according to its Greek origin. In other words: God, from all eternity, has had a plan for our personal salvation, and he carries it out all around us, all the time. The center of that plan and the center of all history is Jesus Christ.
Pope Benedict mentioned St. Paul's hymn in the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians (1:3-14), which I will put here in full:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before him.
He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ,
according to the purpose of his will,
to the praise of his glorious grace
which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
In hin we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the rices of his grace
which he lavished upon us.
For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight
the mystery of his will,
according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ,
as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him,
things in heaven and things on earth.
In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things
according to the counsel of his will,
we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed
to live for the praise of his glory.
In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,
and have believed in him,
were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
God's benevolent design, as laid out here by Saint Paul, is a plan of love. It is gratuitous; it is all around us; it transforms us. Why does God do this? To unite all things in Christ--but what does mean? In asking these questions, we are knocking on the door of faith. To be made a son or daughter of God in Christ is something much greater than what we usually experience it to be.
By entering into our world and uniting us to himself, God gives himself to us--this is one sense of God's self-communication, an expression which Pope Benedict is fond of using. From Dei Verbum we read:
In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1;15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.
God realizes his master plan by entering into a relationship with man, with each and every human being. He broke open the heavens and came down to us to bring us back to himself. As Saint John Chrysystom would say: Look at what we have been given. What else could we want? Or, as Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio:
Revelation has set within history a point of reference which cannot be ignored if the mystery of human life is to be known. Yet this knowledge refers back constantly to the mystery of God which the human mind cannot exhaust but can only receive and embrace in faith.Faith is each person's response to God's plan of love. It is the only way to really receive this plan and put it in play. From Dei Verbum again we read:
"The obedience of faith" (Rom. 13:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) "is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals," and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him.The phrase "commits his whole self freely" is another way of saying that in faith, we abandon ourselves to God. This takes us into a whole new dimension in our outlook on life, our relationship with others, and our relation to all of reality. It is a real attitude adjustment, placing everything we think we know into the hands of God.
Advent is the perfect time to take a look at where I have committed my whole self freely. In Advent we are reminded that Jesus has come and has won the victory; he will come again in glory at the end of time. We are given this time to re-order our lives in order to prepare and be ready for his coming. Not only that, through our faith, hope, and love, God desires to come into the world again through us. Through us, he can make his light shine in the darkness again.
No comments:
Post a Comment