There is a passage in the third chapter of Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians that speaks directly to our first reading. In this passage, Paul writes about how much more glorious the “ministry of the Spirit” is than that of the Law, which the apostle refers to as “the ministry of death” and “the ministry of condemnation.”1
To really understand what Paul is trying to communicate, it’s necessary to grasp that, for the apostle, the Law is perfect. It’s us who are flawed. While Paul certainly believes that human beings can do good things on our own, as it wers (i.e., he’s not an advocate of total depravity, which is quite anti-Pauline), he does not believe that we are capable of keeping the whole Law in letter and spirit.2 This is why he refers to it the way he does in this passage.
Ultimately, what Saint Paul is driving at in this very assertive section is that, unlike ancient Israel, for whom Moses became the sole mediator, through Christ and by the power of His Holy Spirit, “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.”3
Having the Holy Spirit makes all the difference! It is the Holy Spirit who enables you to recognize the kingdom of heaven. More than recognizing it, the Spirit helps you to see not just the value of God’s kingdom relative to worldly things, but to see things as they really are and for what they really are. What the Holy Spirit seeks to do is give you an intense encounter with reality.
This intense encounter with reality forces a fundamental decision on everyone who has it. This decision is about how you are going to live your life and the priorities by which you are going to live. Very often, as Christians, we view faith as icing on the cake of life. But faith that is faith becomes the rule of life.
As Paul intimates, this transformation doesn’t happen all at once. Rather, for the one who sees and recognizes the surpassing value of the kingdom of heaven, this transformation happens little by little, en español poco a poco. The reason for this is that your life matters. What is your life except those things you do every day, the aggregation of the experiences you have?
This is why Saint Ignatius’ insistence on finding God in all things truly means in all things- in the good, the bad, and the ugly of life. For one who lives by faith, this is not just important but vitally necessary. This puts into bold relief the importance of having a method of prayer, like the Examen. Sometimes just where or how God is in some experiences or certain periods of your life isn’t so obvious. You may have to look for him.
Far from hiding, God wants you to find him. Learning to truly see God in all things enables you to move beyond the platitude spouted by the likes of me that God is in all things to seeing for yourself just how that is the case. Because God knows each one of us intimately, better than we know ourselves, how he works in my life is different from how God works in yours.
In its current, incomplete configuration, the kingdom of heaven is hidden in plain sight. It’s most often found in the middle of the world’s messiness. Hence, we need a way of seeing it, of discerning its presence even when it is right in front of us.
Once you learn how to see it, you can’t unsee it. To see it is to behold reality according to all the factors that constitute it. It transforms you day-by-day, encounter-by-encounter, poco a poco.
1 See 2 Corthinthians 3:7-18.↩
2 See Romans 2:12-16.↩
3 2 Corinthians 3:18.↩
No comments:
Post a Comment