In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In today’s Epistle reading from Philippians, St. Paul shows us what communion with Jesus is meant to be. He says: “to live is Christ, and to die is gain”. What a depth of devotion lies behind those nine simple words: to live is Christ, and to die is gain. To be able to say that with honesty and with integrity would mean nothing less than deification – inextricable and persistent communion with God.
Similarly, today’s Psalm opens with an apparently innocuous couple of verses: “I will exalt you , O God my King, / and bless your Name forever and ever. Every day will I bless you / and praise your Name forever and ever.” How easy it is to allow those verses to pass through our minds and over our lips without notice, reading in them nothing but the platitudes we have grown accustomed to finding in the Bible. But in truth, these two verses disclose a breathtaking depth of faith. An honest engagement with the full significance of this statement should leave us convicted and penitent. Can I honestly say to God “Every day will I bless you”? To ask oneself this question can be to disclose within oneself the secret preconditions we have for our praise and thanksgiving. Can I really say with honesty “Every day will I bless you”? What about days of suffering? What about the days of listlessness or dissatisfaction? What about days when I simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed? What about the days when God vindicates your enemies, or appoints a worm to attack your shade tree?
Most of us are capable of praising God under certain circumstances, but who can praise him “forever and ever”? Who can bless him “every day”? We are rather more apt to set ourselves up as the judges of God, and the acceptability of his purposes; and our standard is the degree to which God conforms himself to OUR circumstances and desires. I am mindful of St. Cyprian of Carthage who, on the day he was informed by his captors that he was to be beheaded because he was a Christian, replied simply “Thanks be to God”. Who has that kind of faith in the promises of God?
It is this kind of faith that is the wellspring of Paul’s conviction that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It is the conviction that flows from an integrated personhood united with Jesus Christ in the intimacy of a real and affective love for him, always remembering that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (Jn. 14.15). When we come to see ourselves – our lives – as an integrated whole, presented to God in union with the acceptable sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, then we are enabled to say with him: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23.46), we are able to look forward, with Paul, to “fruitful labor” or to the Christian obedience of death itself. When we unite ourselves to the sacrifice of Jesus, we become pure, redemptive power in the hands of God, vessels of his grace, and the lights of the world in our generation (cf. BCP Preface of a Saint 1).
But through our union with Christ and our love for him, not only are we granted a mystical objectivity with respect to ourselves – not only, in other words, do we find our true home in heaven and our true SELVES in God – but we also discover one another in Christ. In him we find ourselves able, as for the first time, to LOVE our fellow human beings – we are enabled to reach out with true empathy to the world, to the poor, to those who suffer, who are alone. It is only in Christ that our indifference, our cynicism, or even our do-gooding truly become PHILANTHROPIA, in the literal sense of LOVE for our fellow-man. In Christ alone our dispositions towards one another are transformed into true self-donation, true LOVE.
And this is why, in today’s reading, St. Paul locates his obedience not merely in God’s will, but in God’s will FOR HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS. He is able to say (in faith, with conviction): “[for me] to remain in the flesh is more necessary on YOUR account”. And therefore Paul submits his life and labor to God, loving the love of God in the Philippians, pouring himself out, as he says, “for YOUR progress and joy in the faith, so that in me YOU may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus”. Jesus – the CROSS of Jesus – has become the axis around which Paul’s relationship to the Philippians turns. His self-possession is subsumed in his love for them and his obedience to God in Christ.
And that is God’s desire for each of us. That’s what HAPPENS to us when we discover our true selves in the sacred heart of the Crucified: God grants us a spiritual objectivity; we are enabled to see ourselves, our entire lives, as an integrated whole. When I find myself in God, I find that I have a PURPOSE and a HOME. I find that I was made for God, and because I was made for God, who is Love, I simultaneously find my meaning in God’s own self-gift on behalf of his children, my brothers and sisters. And so that too becomes my meaning: love for all creation, saying with Christ “Father, forgive them,” and desiring with Paul that “in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ”.
This is the exclusive gift of God in his only Son. It is what it means to obey the voice that finds us idle in the marketplace and whispers in our hearts “Follow me” – holding on in faith to this man as he toils up the steep ascent, burdened with the cross. And this is the test of our vocation: discovering within ourselves the voice of song, even on Golgotha – ESPECIALLY on Golgotha – “I will exalt you, O God my King, and bless your Name forever and ever” – and pondering here, in God’s most marvelous work, his kindness and compassion, and the glorious splendor of his majesty (cf. Psalm 145.5).
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In today’s Epistle reading from Philippians, St. Paul shows us what communion with Jesus is meant to be. He says: “to live is Christ, and to die is gain”. What a depth of devotion lies behind those nine simple words: to live is Christ, and to die is gain. To be able to say that with honesty and with integrity would mean nothing less than deification – inextricable and persistent communion with God.
Similarly, today’s Psalm opens with an apparently innocuous couple of verses: “I will exalt you , O God my King, / and bless your Name forever and ever. Every day will I bless you / and praise your Name forever and ever.” How easy it is to allow those verses to pass through our minds and over our lips without notice, reading in them nothing but the platitudes we have grown accustomed to finding in the Bible. But in truth, these two verses disclose a breathtaking depth of faith. An honest engagement with the full significance of this statement should leave us convicted and penitent. Can I honestly say to God “Every day will I bless you”? To ask oneself this question can be to disclose within oneself the secret preconditions we have for our praise and thanksgiving. Can I really say with honesty “Every day will I bless you”? What about days of suffering? What about the days of listlessness or dissatisfaction? What about days when I simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed? What about the days when God vindicates your enemies, or appoints a worm to attack your shade tree?
Most of us are capable of praising God under certain circumstances, but who can praise him “forever and ever”? Who can bless him “every day”? We are rather more apt to set ourselves up as the judges of God, and the acceptability of his purposes; and our standard is the degree to which God conforms himself to OUR circumstances and desires. I am mindful of St. Cyprian of Carthage who, on the day he was informed by his captors that he was to be beheaded because he was a Christian, replied simply “Thanks be to God”. Who has that kind of faith in the promises of God?
It is this kind of faith that is the wellspring of Paul’s conviction that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It is the conviction that flows from an integrated personhood united with Jesus Christ in the intimacy of a real and affective love for him, always remembering that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (Jn. 14.15). When we come to see ourselves – our lives – as an integrated whole, presented to God in union with the acceptable sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, then we are enabled to say with him: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23.46), we are able to look forward, with Paul, to “fruitful labor” or to the Christian obedience of death itself. When we unite ourselves to the sacrifice of Jesus, we become pure, redemptive power in the hands of God, vessels of his grace, and the lights of the world in our generation (cf. BCP Preface of a Saint 1).
But through our union with Christ and our love for him, not only are we granted a mystical objectivity with respect to ourselves – not only, in other words, do we find our true home in heaven and our true SELVES in God – but we also discover one another in Christ. In him we find ourselves able, as for the first time, to LOVE our fellow human beings – we are enabled to reach out with true empathy to the world, to the poor, to those who suffer, who are alone. It is only in Christ that our indifference, our cynicism, or even our do-gooding truly become PHILANTHROPIA, in the literal sense of LOVE for our fellow-man. In Christ alone our dispositions towards one another are transformed into true self-donation, true LOVE.
And this is why, in today’s reading, St. Paul locates his obedience not merely in God’s will, but in God’s will FOR HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS. He is able to say (in faith, with conviction): “[for me] to remain in the flesh is more necessary on YOUR account”. And therefore Paul submits his life and labor to God, loving the love of God in the Philippians, pouring himself out, as he says, “for YOUR progress and joy in the faith, so that in me YOU may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus”. Jesus – the CROSS of Jesus – has become the axis around which Paul’s relationship to the Philippians turns. His self-possession is subsumed in his love for them and his obedience to God in Christ.
And that is God’s desire for each of us. That’s what HAPPENS to us when we discover our true selves in the sacred heart of the Crucified: God grants us a spiritual objectivity; we are enabled to see ourselves, our entire lives, as an integrated whole. When I find myself in God, I find that I have a PURPOSE and a HOME. I find that I was made for God, and because I was made for God, who is Love, I simultaneously find my meaning in God’s own self-gift on behalf of his children, my brothers and sisters. And so that too becomes my meaning: love for all creation, saying with Christ “Father, forgive them,” and desiring with Paul that “in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ”.
This is the exclusive gift of God in his only Son. It is what it means to obey the voice that finds us idle in the marketplace and whispers in our hearts “Follow me” – holding on in faith to this man as he toils up the steep ascent, burdened with the cross. And this is the test of our vocation: discovering within ourselves the voice of song, even on Golgotha – ESPECIALLY on Golgotha – “I will exalt you, O God my King, and bless your Name forever and ever” – and pondering here, in God’s most marvelous work, his kindness and compassion, and the glorious splendor of his majesty (cf. Psalm 145.5).
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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