In our first reading we hear from the prophet Isaiah, that the Word of God, will not return to Him empty. He is speaking of the Word or Logos, who is Jesus Christ, this is a foretelling of Him who is to come, and will bring God’s message to the people, and it will bear much fruit. Our second reading from Saint John likewise bears the message of the one begotten by God, his Son, Jesus Christ, and the salvation that will come through Him, to the world. Moreover, Saint John tells us of this salvation coming through blood, water, and the Spirit, the fruits of Jesus sacrifice and new covenant with us. We are saved through this water and blood shed for us, and through our obeying the action of the Spirit working within us and drawing us closer to Jesus Christ. It is only through this that salvation comes to each one of us.
The question for each one of us then becomes, how do obey the Spirit working within us, and honor the covenant that Jesus created through the blood and water that flowed from His side? First of all, we need to understand and honor the gifts that we received at baptism, and eventually confirmation with His Church. We have received the gift of the spirit, but it is one that needs to be accepted and cultivated to bear fruit within us. We need to actively keep in our minds our desire to be part of Gods kingdom, which is our continual acceptance of the
Spirit, and we need to cultivate this gift through prayer and our actions in our everyday lives. Our prayers are the way we communicate, and our actions are the way we hopefully demonstrate our acceptance of God’s teachings. Like any good relationship, communication with our Lord is key, how can we hope to know Him better without communicating? We must be open about what is going on in our lives, He wants to hear everything, all the stuff that is taking place with us, there is nothing that He will consider trivial. He wants to hear, not because He doesn’t already know what is going on, but because He wants us to bring it up, to place it before Him, to develop this kind of communication that includes Him in our lives and shows our reliance upon Him in all that we do. He wants to be part of our life, not just some outsider we reach to when things really get tough. His desire is for intimacy with each one of us, like that of a spouse, someone who is part of us in everything. As we do this, we will find more and more that we see His responses in ways that we might otherwise have missed, these are the fruits of the Spirit working in us as we draw closer to Him in relationship. We will see things in our reading of His word in the bible, we will notice things in our everyday lives where He is helping us along. We will feel His presence more and more on an everyday basis and draw comfort and hope from that. We will never feel alone again.
Our actions that come from this closeness will be the other fruits that come of this. We will find our perspective changing, and our behavior. We will begin to automatically think of His will before our own, and in so doing demonstrate our acceptance of His teachings, and our love for Him. This will not happen overnight, but it will happen, we must simply make the leap of faith and put forth our will to be drawn close to His own. We need to be willing to give up the illusion of our own control, and trust in our Lord enough to allow Him to show us what is possible if we let His will be done and let Him handle even what we think are our toughest issues. He will not let us down, we may not always get exactly what we want, or perhaps even fully understand what His plan is, that’s ok, we don’t need to, His ways are far above our ways, and His thoughts far above ours, for our part we need to trust Him. He did not let us down when He died for each one of us on the cross, and then rose again as He said, He will not let us down now or ever.
Podcast Link
The Deacons Bench 