THE JOY OF THE ANGELS OVER OUR REPENTANCE


THURSDAY, THIRTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Rom 14:7-12; Ps 27:1,4,13-14; Lk 15:1-10

The Expectation of Heaven

The word of God is addressed to every one of us, and not just to a selected few. If God, the Creator of all things, has spoken to us and made known his will for us, it is of utmost importance that we make every effort to understand the divine will for us. If the whole of our life is a period to achieve our transformation into the likeness of God, as the Catechism and the Scriptures affirm, then any of our endeavours that do not get us to know the will of God and fulfil it is a waste of time. The obligation to know the will of God becomes even more important when we consider the fact that God sent his Only Begotten Son to reveal his will to us for our salvation. The incarnation of the Son of God is the greatest proof that God wants us to attend the heavenly banquet, which is the same thing as making us in his likeness. Conversion is to take the invitation of God to the heavenly banquet seriously. It entails opening ourselves to the divine presence revealed through various means and situations in our lives. Above all, it entails bringing ourselves to encounter the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who became man for our salvation. Since becoming like God is something beyond our natural power or endowment, it means abandoning our own ways and embracing the word of God.

The required death to self is the first meaning of Saint Paul’s words, which can also imply our physical death. “The life and death of each of us has its influence on others; if we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord, so that alive or dead we belong to the Lord. This explains why Christ both died and came to life: it was so that he might be the Lord both of the dead and of the living.” The life and death of Jesus Christ were to redeem us from our evil ways, in which our disobedience to the Father’s will landed us. Christ has redeemed us; so, the life we live must be a life of attention to the Lord, to carry out his will. This is the meaning of spiritual life; any other type of life means we are dead to the Lord. Any of these has implications for others, for we become a means of communicating the divine will to others when we live conscious of his will. We also communicate death or disobedience to others when live in denial of his will for us. Since he made us for himself and has redeemed us by his life, death, and resurrection, we owe him an account of our lives. “We shall all have to stand before the judgement seat of God.” The life we live now is not ours, but something entrusted to our care by the Lord, for which we must give account of our stewardship. It will become ours when we become like him by following his will in all things.

By striving to know his divine will for us and doing it at all times, we are not only eating our ration of the bread from heaven but also given the right ration to those entrusted to us as stewards of God’s mysteries in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the tax collectors and the sinners were doing the right thing, coming back to the divine will for us, by seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say. The parable our Lord directed to the Pharisees and scribes who were complaining was to expose their ignorance of the purpose of God’s visitation through his Son. “What man among you with hundred sheep, losing one, would not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the missing one till he found it? And when he found it, would he not joyfully take it on his shoulders and then, when he got home, call together his friends and neighbours? “Rejoice with me,” he would say “I have found my sheep that was lost.”” Subsequently, our Lord made an amazing revelation about heaven. “In the same way, I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine virtuous men who have no need of repentance.” God and angels rejoice over us more when we repent and confess our sins than when we present ourselves as righteous and not in need of repentance. It is the preoccupation of God here on earth to get us to attend the heavenly banquet, and the angels are happy to see us renew our commitment to the heavenly banquet. Based on this expressed divine invitation and operations, we say with the psalmist: “I am sure I shall see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living.”

Let us pray: Almighty and merciful God, by whose gift your faithful offer you right and praiseworthy service, grant, we pray, that we may hasten without stumbling to receive the things you have promised. 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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