Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand!
Imagine being in the first crowds Jesus addressed after the arrest of
John the Baptist, as this Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew recounts. Would you be one of the ones whose response
was radical, like the first four apostles called by Jesus: immediately
they followed him? Would you
recognize the great light that has arisen, a sign of salvation to the
Israelites in ancient times, a sign of hope for Jesus’s contemporaries who
expectantly await the Messiah? Would you
sign up without hesitation for the salvation he promises?
We know, as Paul reminds the Corinthians, that salvation comes
at the cost of Christ crucified. Post-Crucifixion, we know that there is intense and limitless love in the death of Jesus, the death that
guarantees our salvation. It may make us
uncomfortable to contemplate the truth of Jesus on the Cross, yet it is a cross
we must embrace – Jesus took our sins to death with him on the Cross – even as
we embrace the resurrection, and the joy, that followed.
Anguish has taken
wing, dispelled is darkness, cries Isaiah.
For Christians, Jesus’s coming echoes this end to chaos, when God broke
the primoridal gloom and distress, opening the way to abundant joy and great rejoicing. As Jesus
begins his ministry – of teaching, proclaiming, and healing – his followers are
transformed both physically and spiritually, as his words offer healing of the
spirit even as his actions cure their ills.
They are called to believe in God’s power to save, and to rely on God’s
presence as a refuge of salvation, as in Psalm 27: The
Lord is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid? What a reason for joy! And, as that ministry ends, on the Cross,
those same followers are called to remain united
in the same mind and in the same purpose, knowing that their ultimate union
will be perfect union in heaven, the
loveliness of the Lord in the
kingdom, now, at hand, and
forever.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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