Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For He is our peace, . . ., having abolished in His flesh the enmity, . . ., that He might make in Himself one new Man out of the two, . . ., and that He might reconcile both unto God in one Body by the Cross, . . . Now therefore, ye are strangers and foreigners no more, but citizens with the saints, and of the Household of God.
As the Church draws near to the Nativity of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ according to the Flesh, we hear from St. Paul of one of the effects of God the Son taking on human flesh and blood. In Him – in His flesh – God and man are united, so that the Apostle can say elsewhere that the Man, Jesus, is the one Mediator between God and men, “Who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tm. 2:5). In the laying down of His life, or better, in the voluntary offering up of His life as the one perfect Sacrifice on the Altar of the Cross, the Man Jesus Christ has once-and-for-all made peace, that is to say, He has reconciled the factions that have existed since communion with God was broken by our first parents in the Garden. The fracture lay, not with God, but with us, and the reconciliation of God and man by our Lord in His flesh is not that of appeasing the wrath of an angry God, but of restoring the lost and fallen wayward to the heart of the Father, of reconciling God and sinners.
This is the peace procured for us by God Himself. It is not a mere cessation of hostilities, a fragile ceasefire called on the eve of our destruction. It is peace – the peace of God’s good will toward all men, as proclaimed by those angelic choirs to shepherds as they watched their flocks by night (Lk. 2:1-20). It is . . . . . . . reconciliation . . . . . . . restoration . . . . . . . reunion . . . . . . . a healing of the breach in our communion with God. The blood of the Lamb’s Cross brings peace – God’s peace – to us sinners (Co. 1:14, 20). It is the divine poultice applied to our ancient wounds, the oil poured out, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is the bringing together of those who were once parted: Jews and pagan Gentiles, yes. That middle wall of partition barring one from the other has been torn down, says the Apostle, just like the veil in the Temple was torn asunder from top to bottom at the last breath of the Son of God upon the Cross granting us sinners access through Jesus Christ to the Father (Mt. 27:50-51). “’It is finished!,’” was the Crucified’s cry, at which He bowed His mighty thorn-crowned head and gave up His spirit (Jn. 19:30). God takes it upon Himself to do for us what we sinners could not do because that’s what love does (Ep. 2:4). “Love came down at Christmass.”
The Apostle speaks in very earthy, concrete terms: God accomplishes all of this in the very Body – the flesh – of His Son nailed to the Cross (Co. 1:21-22). In this one Body of Jesus, then, God makes peace. And, in the one Body of His Son, God re-establishes communion. Indeed, St. Paul says that in Jesus Christ one New Man is formed, both Jew and pagan Gentiles together. Those who are near unto God and those who are far off. Those of God’s Old Covenant and those of us who had been without hope and without God in this world (Ep. 2:12), that is, until the appearance of Jesus Christ in the flesh (Ts. 2:11; 3:4). In Him, God has made us alive who were dead in our sins, held captive by the devil and the fear of death (Ep. 2:2; Hb. 2:14-15). In Him, we have “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ep. 1:7; Co. 1:14).
But, notice, beloved, how God does us one better. Not only does He unite us as one, Jew and pagan Gentile, sinner and sinner – “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rm. 3:23) – but He does so in the Body of His Son, that is, in the Church which is the flesh and blood Body of Jesus Christ, “the fullness,” Paul says, “of Him that filleth all in all” (Ep. 1:22-23). The Church is the new Man created by God from the pierced side of His Son and we are set within Her so that “through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” “Through Him” in the Church wherein the Spirit of God dwells we have access to the Father. We come to the Father through His Son in the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Church. “’No one comes to the Father except through Me,’” says our Lord (Jn. 14:6), that is, through His Church which is Christ Himself in the midst of this world, His Body and His Bride. The Church is the virginal womb of our salvation, the Mother of us all. As St. Cyprian of Carthage famously enjoined, “We cannot have God as our Father if we do not have the Church as our Mother.” Here, then, in Her maternal waters of Baptism, unclean sinners are washed clean, restored whole, and made new. From Her purifying waters we are brought forth as the sons of God to glorify God the Father in the grace of the Holy Spirit. Through Christ, to the Father, in the Spirit. No longer are we Jew or pagan Gentile, slave or free, male or female (1 Cr. 12:13; Ga. 3:27-29; Co. 3:11). But rather, in Christ and through Him, we become one new Man, “a new race,” as the Epistle to Diognetus says of the Church. “A holy nation,” in the words of the Apostle Peter, “a royal priesthood” (1 Pe. 2:9).
This takes place in the Church – that one new and perfect Man spoken of by the Apostle that is being built up in love, he says, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ep. 4:13, 16). The Church, beloved, is the locus of divine activity, the place of God’s habitation, as St. Paul says. It is where God meets us through His Son in the Holy Spirit. We are “living stones,” again to use St. Peter’s words, who are “being built up [as] a spiritual house, . . ., to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pe. 2:5), “to proclaim the praises of Him Who called [us] out of darkness into His marvelous Light” (1 Pe. 2:9).
This, then, is the fulfillment of what our Lord said to the Samaritan woman at the well that the Father seeks those souls to worship Him truly in Spirit and in Truth (Jn. 4:19-24). We worship God the Father through His Son in the Holy Spirit. The bloodless Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist – the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ – is offered up to God the Father in the Holy Spirit. Our prayers are offered up to God the Father through His Son in the Holy Spirit.
The Church, beloved, comes to the Father through His Son in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. The Church is the Household of God, His holy Temple, according to St. Paul, the Body of the Son in Whom the Spirit abides (1 Cr. 3:16-17; 6:19-20; 2 Cr. 6:16). She is very much a living and breathing Body, consisting of flesh and blood sinners who have been brought near to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. Her children are fellow citizens of all the saints of every time and every place, not by anything we have done, but by what God has done for us through His Son. Most special to Her are the Lord’s own Apostles and Prophets upon whom the Church is founded with Jesus Christ the Son of God as the “Chief Cornerstone” or “Keystone.” What the Prophets have foretold Christ God has fulfilled and the Apostles have preached. It is the Faith of the Apostles and Prophets, which is the Faith of Jesus Christ, that fills the Church and founds the Church of every time and every place, even yet today, nothing changed.
Thus, She is “the Church of the living God, the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth” (1 Tm. 3:15), “’and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against [Her]’” (Mt. 16:18). It is in this Church here, beloved, in this flesh and blood assembly of souls that have been sainted by God, that God and sinners are reconciled, that God’s peace is received and perfected in those who repent in all humility, that God stretches forth His hand and touches our fragile humanity. This glorious Mystery all because of the Nativity of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ according to the Flesh.
Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
PROPERS:
Ep. 2:14-22
Lk. 17:12-19