LIVING A GRACE-DRIVEN LIFE

WEDNESDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER

Act 15:1-6; Ps 122:1-5; Jn 15:1-8

From Unbelief to Faith in God

The Psalmist reminiscences on his experience of Jerusalem, saying: “I rejoiced when I heard them say: ‘Let us go to God’s house.’ And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.” He speaks of the physical Temple of God in Jerusalem, in the land of Judaea here. His enthusiasm is mainly directed towards the physical beauty and the compactness of the Temple, for he adds, “Jerusalem is built as a city strongly compact. It is there that the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord.” This psalm of ascent to the Temple of Jerusalem has more mystical meaning than physical, for while its physical meaning praises the physical form and beauty of the Temple in Jerusalem built by human hands, the mystical meaning applies to the mystical Jerusalem that is a spiritual reality accessible to all faithful souls. The physical Temple and the mystical Temple are not the same, though they were confused as the same until the coming of the Son of Man. With the appearance of the Son of Man, there began a dialectical tension between the physical Temple and the mystical Temple, which first took a concrete form in his incarnation. Jesus taught this lesson when he told the Jews to destroy the Temple and that he would build it up in three days. He left them wondering about the physical Temple built by human hands while he concerned himself with the mystical Temple, which is his physical body.

The Church picks the responsorial psalm with this distinction in mind. The physical Temple of Jerusalem is the work of human hands and represents our human effort in reaching and containing God. But the mystical Temple realised in the incarnation of the Eternal Word is entirely the work of God and the revelation of God’s will for man's salvation. Jesus teaches us that human efforts or works are useless for salvation when he dissuades his disciples from their engrossment with the physical beauty of the Temple of Jerusalem. He revealed the coming destruction of the Temple. The same applies to our efforts or works at being saved without faith in Jesus Christ. The mysteries of the mystical Temple are the mysteries of Jesus Christ, for the Temple is the mystical body of Jesus Christ. The Church is built by the outpouring of divine graces and the Holy Spirit through the death of Jesus Christ and not by human efforts or works. The confusion of the physical Temple of Jerusalem for the mystical Temple of God, realised everywhere in the world by faith in the word of God, remained in the early Jewish Christians. “Some men came down from Judaea and taught the brothers, ‘Unless you have yourselves circumcised in the tradition of Moses you cannot be saved.’” The erroneous teaching in the vibrant Christian community in Antioch brought to the surface an underlying tension in the life of the early Church, which the Council of Jerusalem resolved.

The cause of the tension lies within each of us. It is about our old way of living and the new life of grace. Our old and human way of living and understanding goodness is law-driven, while our new life in Jesus is grace-driven. The former is about what we do, but the latter is about what we believe. In the former, we justify ourselves by what we have done. Justification in Christianity is about believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Believing makes us members of the Son of Man, sharing his life through grace and the Holy Spirit. What we do subsequently is what the Holy Spirit inspires us to do through the grace made abundant for us in Christ Jesus. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch in me that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned already, by means of the word that I have spoken to you.” The analogy is very apt, for the branches do nothing more than open their leaves to the sun to take in energy for bearing fruits with the nutrients from the vine. We live in the presence of the risen Lord while drinking in his heavenly teaching, which is essential for bearing spiritual fruits.

Let us pray: O God, restorer and lover of innocence, direct the hearts of your servants towards yourself, that those you have set free from the darkness of unbelief may never stray from the light of your truth. 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.