Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
It is one thing to visit a foreign country as a tourist, experiencing a different culture and different scenery than one’s native place only for a time. This can be a thrilling and enlightening experience. It is another thing altogether to live permanently as a foreigner, an alien, a stranger, wandering forever in a land that is not one’s own. This latter state is a permanent experience of homelessness, in the metaphorical sense of the word. And for one who is never “at home,” true rest is elusive, even impossible.
Paul uses this image of alienation to describe the state of the Ephesian community before they received the Gospel. “You were at that time without Christ,” he says, “alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.” It is a bleak picture Paul paints. But it serves only to accentuate the greatness of God’s gift in Christ: “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the Blood of Christ. . . . You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God.” And all this not because we have passed a citizenship exam for the heavenly kingdom, but as a pure gift made out of love.
Our citizenship in heaven (cf. Phil 3:20) gives us certain rights and privileges—we can call God Abba, Father, above all—but it also brings duties and responsibilities. If we would be true to our heavenly calling, then we are bound to live according to the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve (Matt 20:28).
Today, let us reflect on the gift of our citizenship with the saints, and ask ourselves how we can live more authentically this great calling, asking for the grace to become the “temple sacred in the Lord” we are meant to be.