CIRCLES OF PRESENTATIONS, PURIFICATIONS, AND SACRIFICES


MONDAY, FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 

Heb 11:32-40; Ps 31:20-24; Mk 5:1-20

Understanding our Perfection in Jesus Christ

Hebrews list some names of those who lived by faith in God for us. The faith of these people made them live in due relationship to the unseen realities. Faith enhanced their lives and enabled them to achieve what ordinary humans could not. To live a life of faith is to be driven by a different desire from what drives or motivates ordinary persons. Through the heightened desire in the persons of faith that the Spirit of God lives and controls their lives. We cannot share a life beyond the material life of ordinary humans without love for an end outside what is physical. “They were too good for the world and they went out to live in deserts and mountains and in caves and ravines. These are all heroes of faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had made provision for us to have something better, and they were not to reach perfection except with us.”

We acclaim these heroes of our faith because they took the word of God as real and something to hold onto. Their extraordinary lives started with their self-presentation to God through his word. First, they presented themselves as they were, expressing a desire to be better and pleasing to God by obeying his word and keeping his commandments. Second, they worked to purify themselves from whatever was displeasing to God. This process of purification takes different forms according to what each desires and what the hindrances are: “Others submitted to torture, refusing release so that they would rise again to a better life. Some had to bear being pilloried and flogged, or even chained up in prison.” Third, they sacrificed what they had to obtain what they desired. The sacrifice requires faith and substantiates faith in their lives. Their sacrifice demonstrated they believed in the existence of what they desired, though they have not seen it physically or experienced it in their human life. “They were stoned, or sawn in half, or beheaded; they were homeless, and dressed in the skins of sheep and goats; they were penniless and were given nothing but ill-treatment.” The sacrifices are what they pay to be freed from the affectations of evil and win the company of heavenly realities.

The sacrifices elevated them to a spiritual communion with the object of their desire and faith. Because their desire was for God, the sacrifice purified them, and they achieved a certain level of communion with God. They were too good for the world but imperfect or not good enough to attain union with God. Our perfection is a gift and not earned by human effort. The three-phased process is the action of God in us through faith, which we appropriate at each level, but the union with him remains a gift that we can never earn. In the humanity of Jesus Christ, he gave himself to a human nature purified by him from every affectation of evil. Our perfection is in him as he is sanctifying us. The encounter between Jesus and the Gerasene demoniac illustrates God’s encounter with our fallen human race and each of us as we repent of our sins. At the first sight of Jesus, the demoniac presented himself before him in full expression of his plight. In conversation with him and the spirits holding him in bondage, Jesus purified him by riding him of the spirits, which ended with the sacrifice of the swine. But the communion with God was denied because there were still levels of presentations, purifications, and sacrifices to pass through before the mystical union. Our perfect communion with God, which Jesus Christ already attained in principle, is yet to be fully realised in each of us. We should not be dismayed to experience purifications and sacrifices whenever we renew our commitment to Jesus Christ. It is a circle of growth in spiritual life.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honour you with all our mind, and love everyone in truth of heart. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.    

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