29th week in ordinary time, Oct. 26, 2006

Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21. Psalm 33:1-5,11-12,18-19. Luke 12:49-53.

We are all open to the calls of Jesus given to us in the Gospels. Paul helps us in the following verse from Ephesians to have a good guiding principle to live up to the call of Jesus. I personally was more moved by this verse than the others: "May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, and may your charity be the root and foundation of your life." (Eph.3:17). And upon reading the passage a second time, I saw that it is bound up within the mystery of the Trinity emphasizing the Persons while maintaining the unity of the Godhead. Paul would never depart from his Jewish concentration on God's oneness. At the beginning Paul mentions the Father before whom he bows down in adoration and prayer; then the Christ or the Son in whom we believe, and the Spirit who works within us through love. All of this is to be experienced within the Christian community of the Church. We remember that Ephesians is primarily about the members of Christ who are the Church; it is an ecclesial encylical epistle to all of the local churces that Paul has developed or visited.

Our spiritual life is not an isolated life. We have a sense of belonging to one another through the Church and through the Mystical body of Christ and the Communion of Saints. And as I read again this epistle, I realized that there is enough teaching and encouragement for a week of retreat within it. It could easily be supplemented by selections from Vatican II's "Constitution on the Church" and "Gaudium et Spes" (The Church in the World).

Next week, on Wednesday, we will finish our readings taken from Ephesians. And as we do, let us remember that this epistle is almost self-explanatory and reads like a prayer, an exhortation, a spiritual reading pamphlet. Perhaps, on our own time, we could set aside a half hour to read it slowly in one sitting. This would be a prayer and a reflection on the meaning of the Body of Christ as the Church. Amen.