Word to the Wise
Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - Tuesday in the 29th Week in Ordinary Time
[Eph 2:12-22 and Luke 12:35-38]So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
I once attended the civil ceremony of swearing-in of new citizens for one of our Dominican brethren who had emigrated to the U.S.A. some years before. I felt I was at the United Nations! It was a happy occasion and clearly an important change in the lives of the new citizens! This is the nearest I can come to understanding the power of the first image in today's passage from Ephesians - "no longer strangers and sojourners." Paul is welcoming people who were not part of Jewish tradition but pagan background. Baptism had made them "citizens!" Perhaps we who are cradle Catholics could experience a bit of this if we attend the Easter Vigil and witness the baptism of those who are becoming Catholics.
But there is a second image as well - that of being part of a building. I live in a city with some very large and very tall buildings: Houston, TX. I am not sure I would want to think of myself as a tiny part of one of those, but maybe a tiny part of St. Peter's in Rome! The image of Christ as the capstone refers to the architecture of an arch in which that top stone exerts pressure to hold the arch together.
These images are part of the grand vision of the Letter to the Ephesians which presents a living reality called "the body of Christ," which is, in turn, an image of the Church. We can rest a bit in these images before going further in Ephesians, where there are challenges that can cause considerable debate! Stay tuned! AMEN