There’s a spiritual battle in this world, between the Lord’s way of life (poverty, humility, and service) and the world, with its laws and values of wealth, vanity, and pride. One leads to love, the other to death. Allow the love of Jesus to take root in you.
Hosea says to the people of Israel, “Sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety, break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the LORD, till he comes and rain down justice upon you.” (Hosea 10:1-3,7-8,12) It’s all about love.
“Jesus summoned his Twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.” (Matthew 10:1-7) Jesus sent out these Twelve after telling them, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Those lost sheep today are our fallen away brothers and sisters. We can reach out to those who have fallen away, for starters. Jesus said, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.” We can offer gentle instruction to those who don’t know how to start again to live their faith. We can show them how to begin again and start receiving the Sacraments, the gifts of grace which come to us through the Apostles and their successors. Certainly, this can be done by our Bishops and priests, but often, it will be ordinary Christians who point those lost sheep in the right direction. It’s all about love. When compared to Hosea’s admonition to the Israelites, it’s the same message. Love of one another. Jesus has authority to call back the sinners, the repentant, to Himself and heal them, too.
The Lord sends us into spiritual combat. It’s a fight to the death that He Himself has undertaken, and one that we too are invited to join in, conscious that it’s God’s war. It’s a war waged against the “enemy of human nature”, Satan. It’s also the war waged by the “friend of human nature,” the Lord Jesus, Who wants to win us for God and to recapitulate in Himself all that is good in creation, in order to offer it to the Father, to the praise of His glory. The Law of love will always prevail.
The stake in this war is whether in our own hearts, as well as in the heart of the Church and of humanity itself, the Kingdom of Heaven will be established, with its law of love and the Lord’s way of life: poverty, humility, and service. Or whether the kingdom of this world will triumph, with its laws and values of wealth, vanity, and pride.
Spoiler alert! We know through Divine Revelation that Jesus wins this war. The real question is whether we want to be on the winning side (life) or the losing side (eternal damnation, which is worse than death).
No comments:
Post a Comment