GROWING IN COVENANT AWARENESS

Friday, Fifth Week of Lent/2024

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP

Theme: Growing in Covenant Awareness

What is necessary for us to grow in the awareness of our Covenant with God is having the word of God as the foundation of our life. In yesterday’s reflection, we distinguished between the physical Promised Land and the spiritual Promised Land. The former is for the physical descendants of Abraham, and the latter is for the spiritual descendants of Abraham, which include Jews and Gentiles alike. The latter is a spiritual reality and, therefore, accessible only through spiritual awareness and growth in the Covenant given by the word of God. We have come to understand that the word of is the foundation and essence of the Covenant. Hence, growth in attending to the word of God makes for growth in awareness of the Covenant. Since the word of God is the principle of spiritual life, we must each day employ it in our daily living and transactions of life to grow in the life it offers. Just as we live our physical life in everything we do each day, and by these daily activities grow and mature in our natural or physical life, the same way we must employ our spiritual life in daily activities to grow and develop in it. Jeremiah the prophet gives us an example of a typical engagement of the spiritual word in our physical life. He considers God beside him like a mighty hero to confront his enemies and rescue him from them. “I hear so many disparaging me, “Terror from every side!” Denounce him! Let us denounce him!’ All those who used to be my friends watched for my downfall, ‘Perhaps he will be seduced into error. Then we will master him and take our revenge!’ But the Lord is at my side a mighty hero; my opponents will stumble, mastered, confounded by their failure; everlasting, unforgettable disgrace will be theirs.”

The words of Jesus Christ in the gospel substantiate this understanding. The Son of Man is the principle of the new people of God who would make this manner of living their own. The word of God is principle of living for all the baptized into Jesus Christ. By that fact, they share the life of God by partaking of his Holy Spirit. The word of God makes this participation in the life of God possible. On this basis, we have posited that the word of God is the Promised Land that we are gradually entering to take possession by a growing awareness of the Covenant between us and God. Jesus affirms our affiliation to God in his disputation with the Jews who wanted to remain on a carnal or physical level. “Is it not written in your Law: I said, you are gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed, and scripture cannot be rejected. Yet you say to someone the Father has consecrated and sent into the world, “You are blaspheming,” because he says, “I am the son of God.” Our Lord clearly put it to them that the word of God elevates the status of those that received it to the divine status. This confirms our understanding of the word of God to be God given to us for safekeeping. The safekeeping of the word of God brings us to participation in the life of God. We consider this the deification of our human nature by the word of God. This process becomes objective and absolute in the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. It is the work the Father sent him to do. “If I am not doing my Father’s work, there is no need to believe me; but if I am doing it, then even if you refuse to believe in me, at least believe in the work I do.” 

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to enter into the spirit of your word and build our life on it so that we may gradually possess what it promises.