Thursday, 23 October –
Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time 2014
Ephesians
3:14-21; Psalm 32; Luke 12:49-53
Transforming prayer
The Danish philosopher,
theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author Søren
Kierkegaard, once wrote that
prayer doesn’t change God; it changes us who pray. We don’t pray
to God to get him on our side. Prayer transforms us into listeners to
God’s heartbeat. Prayer facilitates our easing into God’s will.
If this is so, then what Saint Paul expresses with utmost care and
love towards the Ephesian Church is of extreme importance to each and
every one of us. Kneeling before the Father, Saint Paul prays that
“through his Spirit ... you will grasp the breadth and the length,
the height and the depth of the love of Christ, until you are filled
with the utter fullness of God” (vv.16.18-19, First Reading).
Reaching high and
wide
In prayer, we can fathom
Jesus Christ’s love for us. But that mystery of love is of such
proportions that it allows us to reach up to God the Father, from
whom the Son Jesus gets his sonship (“the height and depth”). But
in so doing it shows us that the Spirit who flames that love between
the Father and the Son nudges us to reach out to others (“the
breadth and length”). Would that not transform us into the fullness
of God, he who is the loving Father who generates a self-sacrificing
Son? Would that mutual self-giving character prompt us to be the same
for others?
Unimaginable
Putting on this listening
attitude towards God’s will in prayer would usher us into an
openness to God that will help us surrender to his unfathomable plans
for us, convinced that he “can accomplish infinitely more than we
can ask or imagine” (v.20).
Blazing fire
Would this be the fire
that Jesus has come to bring on earth and which he deeply yearns that
it be already blazing (v.49, Gospel)? If at his baptism, the Father
pointed him out to us as his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased
(see Luke 3:22), wasn’t it because Jesus was completely available
to do his Father’s will, even upon the cross? Wasn’t this the
baptism that he was to receive and to which he looked forward in a
perfect way?
Division
That full adherence to and
embracing of the will of the Father brought perfect joy to him. But
it was also the cause of division even between the most intimate of
relations who were faced with a decision for or against him. “Whoever
is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me
scatters” (Luke 11:23).
Right attitude
‘Lord Jesus, would you
allow me today to take the Beloved Disciple’s place at your side
during the Last Supper? I want to be constantly in tune with your
heart so as to be able to listen to the Father’s heart. Renew your
Spirit of boldness within me because losing myself in your heart
might bring me into some kind of distance from others who have not
yet experienced the width and length and breadth and depth of your
demands. Set me on fire for your Gospel, for it is in it that I will
find the truth, and the truth that sets me free. Amen.”