Word to the Wise
Saturday, June 12, 2021 -
[2 Corinthians 5:14-21 and Luke 2:41-51][E]ven if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer. So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. [2 Corinthians]
IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY (Saturday after the feast of the Sacred Heart)
St. Paul's vision of the Christian person is based on his experience on the road to Damascus. He never met Jesus in the same way as the Twelve did. He met the Risen Christ. The consequences of this encounter between a strict observer of the Mosaic Law and the Risen Jesus echo throughout his letters, but especially in the passage we have to day from his Second Letter to the Corinthians. His point is that Christ died for all people, not just for believers, but believers are entrusted with the message of the reconciliation that Jesus' death and resurrection has brought about between God and humans. We are no longer in a state of fundamental alienation from God (as St. Augustine would later call "original sin"). However, the message requires messengers (or "ambassadors" and a corresponding faith in those who receive it. Baptism becomes the event through which the message is formally received. We become a "new creation" through full faith in Jesus.
Most of us will not have a dramatic encounter of the kind St. Paul experienced. Baptism comes to us as infants. We may witness the impact in acquaintances who go through the RCIA process of admission to full communion in the Catholic Church, but that may remain a personal experience to those folks. Our consciousness of being a "new creation" can be renewed if we pay attention to St. Paul's statement about us being "ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us!" We may react and say, "Who? Me? An ambassador for Christ?" Yes! You and me! AMEN