Immersed in Christ: February 22, 2021
Monday of the First Week of Lent
Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18; Psalm 19; Matthew 25:31-46
The See (Chair) of St. Peter
1Peter 5:1-4; Psalm 23; Matthew 16:13-19
The Father Gives Rebirth
Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy. Leviticus 19:1
We understand that God would proclaim his holiness to us; but not that he would call us to a holiness like his own! What kind of God would suggest that we could be anything like him? What does it say of God that he wants us to be?
God doesn’t want to stay remote from us, just adored in his infinite transcendence. Yes, he alone is God. But he doesn’t want to be God alone. He wants us to “be God.” For that he shares his own divine life with us, life that makes us holy as he is holy.
The Father lifts us above created existence to share in his own uncreated Life; abolishes the barriers of being; fuses finite and infinite, amplifies the human through union with the divine.
Like the water mixed with wine at Mass.
God can only do this by sharing his own Life with us—as Creator making himself our Father: God giving, not only being, but birth. Through a mother.
The angel said to Mary, “The power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born… will be called Son of God.”
Jesus said to the Church, “You will be ‘clothed with power from on high.’ All ‘born of water and Spirit’ by Baptism will be called children of God” (see Luke 1:35; 24:49; John 3:5).
And of Mother Church.
ACTION: Think of God as Father.
PRAYER: The Our Father.