On my trainride in the mornings, I try to pray Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours (the Liturgy of the Hours is a prayer -- required of all Catholic priests and religious brothers and sisters, but perfectly recommended for regular folks, too -- that consists of excerpts from the Psalms, readings from the Bible and prayers of intercession).
The other morning, I was struck by a line in one of the Psalms, and it connected a whole bunch of other thoughts. The line was : "all the earth has seen the salvation by our God." The "salvation" the "earth has seen" is the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. And as Christians, we are baptized into Christ's saving death and rise again into new life as members of his body, the church. That's a free gift from God...a totally gratuitous gift. How different would the world be if we all really lived that reality? As people who have been redeemed?
I've been meditating a lot lately about baptism, mostly because it's come up in discussions in two Bible studies I'm participating in. At my parish, St. Mary's, there's a small group of young adults who are studying the First Letter of St. John. In that letter, the writer is encouraging the early Christians to live lives that are worthy of their baptism -- to love one another. I'm also part of an online study with a small group of fellow FUS grads. We've been reading St. Paul's letters to the Philippians and Colossians. This past week, we were just talking about how Colossians is like a mini-catechism, and for the people it was addressed to, it was speaking of a way of life that was still very new to them.
But there are a couple of places in that letter where St. Paul urges them to live lives worthy of the call they've received, to live like they have been raised with Christ.
What would that really look like if we took those words seriously? That was a really convicting thought.
We'd pay more attention to our fellow men
We'd be more generous with our money, time and talent
We wouldn't be so concerned with the next fad, or the bigger car, or with acquiring things
What would the world be like if we only recognized and truly lived God's gratuitous gift?
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