The Response of Your Heart
by Fr. David M. Knight
Thursday, October 24, 2024
Twenty-Ninth Week of the Year
Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop
Lectionary 476
Eph 3:14-21/Lk 12:49-53
Ephesians 3:14-21: What am I missing if I decide not to think more deeply about the “mystery of Christ”? Before I start to answer (most people won’t), I need to face the clear and simple fact that if I decide not to, I am closing the door to God who wants to grant Paul’s prayer for me:
I pray that you may have the power to grasp fully, with all the holy ones, the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love; and experience this love which surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
If I block God’s response to that prayer, what do I lose? Can’t I live a “good Christian life” without “going for the gold”? Why do I need “life to the full” when I feel pretty satisfied with the level of life, understanding, love and joy that I experience right now? Why get involved in being a “steward of the mystery of Christ” if I feel I am already doing enough for others, and doing enough to enhance life on this planet, to let me get to sleep at night? Why do I need to be “filled with all the fullness of God” here on earth? Won’t I get that in heaven anyway?
Your answer to those questions is the measure of your heart. But it is precisely the dimensions of your heart that Paul asks God to expand for you: enough to embrace “the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love.”
If your problem is that this doesn’t seem realistic to you; that it might work for others, but not for you, Paul adds:
To him whose power now at work in us can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever.
If it depended on you, God would not offer. If God offers, it does not depend on you. Except to say yes and begin. (If you don’t know how to begin, go to www.immersedinchrist.org.)
The zeal Paul had was Christ’s life in him expressing itself. Luke 12:49-53 takes us to the source, what Jesus felt: I came to light a fire on the earth. How I wish it were already blazing! I have a baptism to receive, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Paul and Christopher Fry both echo this!
If we seem out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. (2Corinthians 5:13-14)
The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move. The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring... Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. (Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners)
What is the response of your heart?
Initiative: Look at yourself; look at the goal; look at Christ. Then decide.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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