Last Sunday our attention was focussed
on the Jewish Law in the Old Testament reading. Law in itself, we learned, is
not enough to keep us close to God. We need something outside the Law to make
it work. That is why the New Law which the prophets foretold, the Law of Jesus
Christ, is “written on our hearts” (Jeremiah 31,31). In the Old Testament this extra
something is called the Law of Holiness: “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am
holy.”
The journey to God is
centred upon this: the Quest for Holiness. It is the most important quest of our
life. To be holy, to be without sin, like Jesus, is what makes us fit to live
with God for all eternity. We cannot do this by ourselves; it has to be done by
God, through the death and Resurrection of his Son, the Lord Jesus. When we
turn to God and ask him to forgive our sins, he answers through the power of
the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts.
But we cannot become holy by worshipping
God on our own; there is no such thing as a private Christianity. God calls us
to be part of his community, the Church. Of course we must pray and read the
scriptures privately. But we also pray with our families. And we worship God
with the whole Church community on the Lord’s Day, and receive, from the
hands of his ministers, his Body and Blood, which the priest has made present upon
his altar. We confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness through the
absolution of his priest. We take part in the life of the Church, and through
our generosity assist and engage in its many ministries and outreaches.
To become holy, we must also bear
witness to Jesus Christ our Saviour to the unbelieving world around us. We can
do this by word and good action. But we can also do harm to Jesus’ mission by bad
example and behaviour. We can harm both ourselves and the Church’s mission by
denying our faith in Jesus Christ when we most need to affirm it before
other humans.
Loving and serving Jesus is our path to
holiness. He is the Law of the Lord which makes us holy. “For there is no other
name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved,” as Peter himself puts it
(Acts 2). It is through loving and worshipping Him, through serving Him in his
Church, through bearing witness to him in the world, especially amongst those
who are in most need of our help, that we are made fit to live eternally with
God. The path to God lies open before us. Let us set out upon it without delay.
Fr Phillip.
No comments:
Post a Comment