THE GATHERING OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD


SATURDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF LENT   

Ezek 37:21-28; Jer 31:10-13; Jn 11:45-56

Gathered Together by The Son of Man

God called Abraham and promised him many blessings if he would obey and follow God. As we noted previously, the physical blessings of descendants, nations, and the land of Canaan were sacramental signs of the spiritual blessings God prepared for Abraham and his spiritual descendants. When God fulfilled the promised physical blessings, he made use of these blessings to direct our attention to the real spiritual blessings that would be realised last. By the scattering of the children of Israel among the nations of the world, God achieved two things: First, he showed the children of Abraham by physical descent that they were mistaken in putting too much emphasis on the physical in place of the spiritual. Second, he sent them to their rightful places among the unbelievers, in preparation for the gathering of the spiritual children or descendants of Abraham from among the nations. So, God disperses and dispenses with the physical unbelieving descendants in order to commence the gathering and revelation of the spiritual blessings of Abraham. Through this action, God teaches us that the sacramental sign must be treated as a means, not an end, unless the end is also found in the sacrament itself. The Israel that God scattered was not the same Israel that he gathered from the nations. Jeremiah prophesied about this. “O nations, hear the word of the Lord, proclaim it to the far-off coasts. Say: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him and guard him as a shepherd guards his flock.’”

The action of God in gathering the sons of Israel from the nations would fulfil His promise to Abraham of making his descendants into nations, and that through them, many people would bless themselves. In doing this, God sacrifices the physical descendants to demonstrate his consecration to the true sons of Abraham; these are children of Abraham by their faith in the word of God. They are consecrated or sacrificed to the word of God as the Word is sacrificed or consecrated to them and their well-being. Ezekiel prophesied about this action of God. “The Lord says this: ‘I am going to take the sons of Israel from the nations where they have gone. I shall gather them together from everywhere and bring them home to their soil. I shall make them into one nation in my own land and on the mountains of Israel, and one king is to be king of them all; they will no longer form two nations, nor be two separate kingdoms.” The land of God is not Canaan, nor the mountains of Israel, physical; the former is the human nature, and the latter are the revelations of God to Israel.

Subsequently, those who will attend to the word of God and practice the divine precepts will own their bodies in holiness and upright living and dwell on the holy mountains of Israel. All the souls with such orientation to God will be drawn together by their love for the Son of Man, who is the David to rule over the spiritual house of God forever. “They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and their filthy practices and all their sins. I shall rescue them from all the betrayals they have been guilty of; I shall cleanse them; they shall be my people and I will be their God. My servant David will reign over them, one shepherd for all; they will follow my observances, respect my laws and practise them.” In the Gospel, we hear Caiaphas repeat the prophecy that the Son of Man will be the rallying point and salvation of all the children of God. “One of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, said, ‘You do not seem to have grasped the situation at all; you fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ He did not speak in his own person, it was as high priest that he made this prophecy that Jesus was to die for the nation—and not for the nation only, but to gather together in unity the scattered children of God.” Thus, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross demonstrated the consecration of the Word of God to our salvation, and we must demonstrate our consecration to God by following the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ daily. This is our vocation in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray: O God, who have made all those reborn in Christ a chosen race and a royal priesthood, grant us, we pray, the grace to will and do what you command, that the people called to eternal life may be one in the faith of their hearts and the homage of their deeds. 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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