THE INHERITANCE OF THE SAINT


WEDNESDAY, TWENTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Col 1:9-14; Ps 98:2-6; Lk 5:1-11

Inheriting the Light

We have traced the cause of the pandemic of sin and darkness to our lack of attention to the word of God. Just as the sun gives light to the earth and thereby sustains every form of life on it, the word of God is the sole source of spiritual light and life for us men. So, to turn away from the word of God is to know spiritual darkness, sin, and death. The Lord our God created both spiritual and physical lights to illuminate his whole creation. The spiritual light is present in the universe, guiding it with wisdom according to the divine plan and purpose. We are able to discern and walk by the spiritual light due to our rational faculty by which we image God. However, the prevalence of darkness and sin in our lives demonstrates our inability to follow the light of wisdom that shines in the universe. The cause of this difficulty is the original sin of our first parents, which wounded our nature and gave it a propensity to self and darkness. Using the language of artificial Intelligence, Man was a divine model at the beginning, to be trained by the created wisdom in creation. The damage done to our nature by the original fall or sin made the planned training difficult and almost impossible. The promise of salvation is the plan of a new and human way of training our nature to acquire wisdom and become like God in our minds and hearts.

The redemption plan is contained in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord. The eternal Wisdom that was present in the universe is now present to us in the Son of Man, as our way to become like God. As we stated yesterday, attention on the Son of Man is the same as attention on the wisdom in nature, but heightened for our easy and speedy training and transformation into the likeness of God. The faithful attention is the path leading to our inheritance of God’s light or truth, which Saint Paul prayed for the Colossians. “Ever since the day we heard about you, we have never failed to pray for you, and what we ask God is that through perfect wisdom and spiritual understanding you should reach the fullest knowledge of his will.” The divine truth, which is fully revealed in Jesus Christ, is the spiritual food we eat daily as we attend to Jesus Christ. It is a banquet of eternal life which we celebrate now in mysteries and in the Sacraments of the Church. Thus, the faithful celebration of these mysteries of our Lord brings us into our inheritance of the light. “You will have in you the strength, based on his own glorious power, never to give in, but to bear anything joyfully, thanking the Father who has made it possible for you to join the saints and with them to inherit the light.”

The training to be like God is the gradual illumination of our minds by the divine truth in Jesus Christ. Through him, we share in the communion of the Holy Spirit according to the will of the Father. Everything that comes to us daily goes into our spiritual training; the Father uses all to transform, redeem, and transfer us to the kingdom of his Son. “He has taken us out of the power of darkness and created a place for us in the kingdom of the Son that he loves, and in him, we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins.” Peter and his companions were called to follow the Son of Man through a miraculous catch of fish. The Lord taught a large crowd of people from his boat and worked a miracle for them. With that, he attracted them to follow him. “When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, ‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.’ For he and all his companions were completely overcome by the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners.” All that the Lord is doing in our lives is to bring us to abandon everything and follow him to inherit God. God prepared this inheritance for us from the very beginning, by willing to create us in his image and likeness. His revelation of his eternal truth in Jesus Christ for our salvation is in accordance with his eternal will for us in love. “The Lord has made known his salvation; has shown his justice to the nations.” The narrowness of the way is due to our sins and the wounds we sustain by doing our wills. May our faith and love for Jesus Christ carry us through the narrow way.

Let us pray: God of might, giver of every good gift, put into our hearts the love of your name, so that, by deepening our sense of reverence, you may nurture in us what is good and, by your watchful care, keep safe what you have nurtured. 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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