He recognizes the fact that all human beings have a deep-seated desire for salvation. Our thirst to live in relationship with God traces its roots back to the Old Testament times. The first reading for today’s liturgy recounts the words that God spoke to Moses when he gave us the Ten Commandments (cf Ex 20:1-17). These ten signposts outline the rules of life by which we still seek to live today. It has always been God’s hope that we should live in relationship with Him, and on many occasions throughout the Old Testament, God has renewed his covenant and planted within our hearts the desire for our relationship with him flourish.
Even today, God’s deepest desire is that our relationship with Him should thrive, but the reality is that there are some current cultural changes in our understanding of the meaning of Christian salvation. Archbishop Ladaria explains that individualism ... tends to see the human person as a being whose sole fulfillment depends only on his or her own strength whereas the Church has always taught that we are all created and loved by God and that even though we may spend our lives seeking a sense of fulfillment, our hearts will always be restless as we continue this search until we rest in God (Saint Augustine of Hippo).
There is also a prevailing tendency to believe in a merely interior vision of salvation: a vision that is marked by a strong personal conviction or feeling of being united to God ... but which does not recognize our need to accept, heal and renew our relationships with others and with the created world.
It would appear that, at least to some extent, we have lost sight of the relationship that God has always sought to cultivate with us: a relationship of mutual love and respect. Jesus recognized this danger too when he went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover and entered the temple. There, instead of finding people praying and worshiping God, he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and money changers seated at their tables (Jn 2:14). In response, he made a whip out of cords and drove all of them out (Jn 2:15). When they asked him to explain his actions, he simply replied: Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up (Jn 2:19). We know that he was referring to the temple of his body, and we know that he fulfilled this promise by rising from the dead. That’s the reason why we are all here today.
Still, the message of salvation that was made clear by Christ’s self-giving death on the cross and by his resurrection appears as foolishness (1 Cor 1:18) to those who refuse to believe the truth of Jesus’ words. Yet, for more than two thousand years, the Church has consistently communicated our faith in God and our expectation that Jesus, our Saviour, will come again at the end of time. Our world is thirsting for this message. Are we willing to share it with those we meet?
No comments:
Post a Comment