Homily for the
15th Sunday of Ordinary
Time
July 16, 2006Eph 1: 3-14
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle
This weekend I'm on vacation and had no invitation to preach. Hence, one from the archives.
“He chose
us in Christ before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1: 4).
In the
extended blessing of God that follows the salutation at the beginning of Paul’s
Letter to the Ephesians, we have a meditation on the plan of God—his plan for
our salvation in Christ.
“Before
the foundation of the world,” before the creation, before the fall, before
Abraham and Moses, God “chose us in Christ,” chose certain individuals—a very
great many, I believe, for he is the rock of our salvation and has no rival in
power over life and death (cf. Matt 16:18)—chose us to be his own special and
beloved children. The Christian doctrine
of predestination holds that we are Christ’s because God elected us, chose us,
called us from eternity. “Before I
formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you,” God
told Jeremiah (1:5). “You did not choose
me; I chose you,” Jesus told his apostles (John 15:16). That call, that choice, that election extends
to us. God’s plan is comprehensive,
generous, and eternal.
Why did
God choose us? Sounds like the old Baltimore Catechism question, doesn’t
it: “Why did God make me?” Paul says:
“He chose us … to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself
thru Jesus Christ” (1:4-5). In Paul’s
Greek the greater part of this entire blessing of the Father, vv. 4-12, almost
the whole reading this evening/morning, is one sentence. That makes it a bit difficult to render into
English and to group the component phrases.
For instance, “in love” could just as easily be made part of the
preceding sentence: “to be holy and
without blemish before him in love.” In
fact, those who numbered the verses so understood it and made a verse division
there.
But regardless
of English construction and verse divisions, God made us out of his own love
and he made us for love. He made us to
be holy and without blemish, or “blameless” in the old translation. He destined us for adoption to himself in
Christ Jesus, i.e., to be his own children thru a relationship with his
only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
He wants to love us as children, as family. He wants to make us clean, pure, perfect,
holy, so that we’re worthy to be his children.
That’s why he chose us; that’s why he called us.
Before
communion at every Mass, we join the Roman centurion in confessing our
unworthiness to be associated with Jesus (Matt 8:8). And then in faith we plead, “Say but the
word, and I shall be healed” (communion rite; cf. Matt 8:8). One word from God—a word spoken by the rite
of Baptism, a word constantly renewed by Reconciliation—heals us. That is God’s call, God’s election, the
manner in which God effects his choice of us
to be his.
Paul continues, that God so chose and so destined us “in accord with the favor of his will” (1:5). It’s God’s own good pleasure to choose us, not something we initiated or deserved. It’s a favor from God, makes us his favorites—“teacher’s pets,” if you will, the doted-upon apples of his eye—each one of us, and without any limit to God’s abundant grace.
I’m reminded of a story from Don Bosco’s life: Some of the boys were gathered around him in the playground, and they began to argue among themselves about which was his favorite. Finally, they asked him directly. He held out his open palm and asked, “Do you see my fingers here?” “Yes, Don Bosco.” “Which one do you think is my favorite?” No answer to that. “And so each of you is my favorite.” How much more can God choose each one of us and favor us abundantly!
That is
his will: “This is God’s will for you,
your sanctification” (1 Thess 4:3), Paul says elsewhere. (A sermon on that text had a powerful impact
on little Dominic Savio, inducing him to go to his spiritual father, Don Bosco,
and plead for guidance in becoming a saint.[1]) It is his will because the saints “praise the
glory of his grace” (1:6). Don’t
athletes and movie stars rate their star power by the crowds they draw? Don’t royalty measure their glory by the
number of courtiers fawning upon them?
So God’s glory is to have a humongous family around him, gathered for
him by Christ and sharing in the serenity, the joy, the beauty, the harmony of
the heavenly court.
God has
already granted this to us, his elect, “in the beloved” (1:6), i.e. in Christ,
his beloved Son. “In him,” Paul goes on,
“we have redemption by his blood” (1:7).
Christ has redeemed us from the power of Satan, from the realm of death
and misery, from sin. Redemption in
biblical terms doesn’t mean ransom.
Christ didn’t buy us back from Satan, using his blood as the price, as
Hamas and Hezbollah want Israel to buy back their captive soldiers by trading
hundreds of prisoners. Ransom would
indicate that Satan is as strong as or stronger than Christ! No, Christ is our redeemer in the way that
Abraham redeemed Lot and his other kin in Genesis 14, when they’d been taken
captive by a coalition of enemy kings.
Abraham gathered his forces, pursued them, whupped them, delivered his
kin from their captors, and gave away the booty he took from his enemies. That’s what Christ has done for us by
conquering death and forgiving our sins as part of the deal.
Paul
mentions that part of the deal immediately:
“In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of
transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon
us” (1:7). Christ has bestowed forgiving
grace in abundance, lavishly, making us holy, clean, without blemish. He makes us a new creation in his own image,
the image of the beloved Son. And so
vast is the scale of Christ’s new creation, the renewal of humanity, that in
him “all things” are “summed up” or, in a word the Fathers of the Church were
fond of, “recapitulated” (1:10). “All
things in heaven and on earth,” all of creation comes together in Christ—the
anthropological, philosophical, and theological vision of Teilhard de Chardin,
that the whole of creation is ascending toward Christ as the highest expression
of what creation means—for the glory of God the Father.
With a
nod to Tevye, that’s God’s “vast, eternal plan,” from “before the foundation of
the world,” that all of us should be his, should share with and in Christ the
glory of divine sonship. And that’s what
we celebrate and God somehow effects each time we gather for the Eucharist,
each time Christ gives himself bodily to us and we become his body.
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