In today's reading, we are told that Christ is reconciling the world to Himself. It may not seem like this at this point in time. Here is a section from this morning's reading:
And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled. So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God. from 2 Corinthians 5
Now, most people do not understand that this new creation is a necessity, as Christ told Nicodemus in John 8. This is not the first conversion, but the second conversion, to which I alluded to several weeks ago.
Unless one cooperates with God in the entering into the purgation necessary, one will not experience the new creation. One becomes like the child in the womb, but in the Spirit, one is born again. This is not what the charismatics means by being born again. This is a mature cleansing of the self from sin, the tendencies towards sin and even imperfections.
We are reconciled to ourselves, to God and then to others. Once we decrease and Christ increases, then Christ is appealing to others outside the Church. The weaknesses within the Church weakened our ability to evangelize.
I am sad today at the thought of wasted graces which weaken the Church.
Do not waste grace, and do not waste time.
