THE GIFT OF TRINITARIAN LIFE


TUESDAY, EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

 1 Pet 1:10-16; Ps 98:1-4; Mk 10:28-31

The Priceless Gift of God’s life given to us

We continue St. Peter’s discourse on the new life we have received from the heavenly Father. The ancient prophets foretold the new life Christians received from God long ago. The Holy Spirit revealed it to them in connection with the promise of a Saviour to come. God informed them of the glory of the heavenly life that would be the lot of those who believe in Jesus Christ. “It was this salvation that the prophets were looking and searching so hard for; their prophecies were about the grace which was to come to you.” All their prayerful search and labour for the coming of the life of God was for our benefit. Our Lord confirmed this when he told his disciples that he was letting them reap what they did not work for; others have worked for the coming of the heavenly life, and they have entered to reap the reward of the work. Cf. Jn 4:34. The glory of the Trinitarian life that the Christians are invited to enjoy is so great that the angels long to catch a glimpse of the life. “Even the angels long to catch a glimpse of these things.” The glory God has invited us to share in Jesus Christ is beyond any human understanding or imagination as witnessed in the scriptures. Those invited to enter this glory must sell everything they own to obtain or contain this priceless gift. 

Our Lord demanded this of the man who came to him to ask for eternal life. We can attempt to estimate the fullness of the divine gift from what is given to us now. Foremost in what we have received is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. To accept the teaching of the Lord on the presence of the Holy Spirit within any believer is to grasp a bit of the gift God has promised those who believe in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is called the Gift of the Father; he initiates the divine life in us and brings us into the communion of the Blessed Trinity. This is a mystery the human mind cannot grasp entirely but must believe as coming from God. A negative but physical way of considering the gift of divine life to us is to consider the sufferings and trials that purify our souls for the reception of this gift. One would wonder what God has promised that will warrant so good our God to subject a soul to so much suffering, pain, and tribulations in this temporal life. 

Yet St. Peter encourages us not to be distressed by these trials and difficulties. “Free your minds, then, of encumbrances; control them, and put your trust in nothing but the grace that will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” About this grace or supernatural life that will be revealed, our Lord himself says it is nothing compared to what we have left or abandoned to follow him. For he said to Peter: “I tell you solemnly, there is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, father, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not be repaid a hundred times over, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and land—not without persecutions—now in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life.” So, the Lord confirms by his words that the glory to be revealed to us will be nothing compared to what we have suffered or abandoned to secure eternal life in Jesus Christ. It is necessary to keep these words of our Lord and his holy apostles in mind, for without these scriptural witnesses lighting up our minds, we would gradually start drawing our values from the world around us. We again emphasize the importance of daily and routine prayer encounters with the Lord to keep our desire for what the Lord has promised us alive in our hearts.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, to constantly keep our minds focussed on the glory that will be revealed when we come to the end our pilgrimage here on earth, so that we may truly abandon the riches and pleasures of this present life that ensnare many souls, to work for our heavenly reward.

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