Memorial of Saint Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs
You have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. With this line, the author of Hebrews reminds us of the awesomeness—in the original sense of the word, that is, inspiring awe, fear, and wonder—of the reality our faith in Christ enables us to enter. Particularly when we gather as an assembly of believers in Christ, we share in the heavenly Jerusalem, of which our Church on earth is a participation and a foretaste.
For invisibly gathered together with us who are gathered visibly are countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, as he pours out for us the sprinkled Blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel. This awesome reality cannot be seen with “fleshly” eyes that see according to the spirit of the world, but can only be seen with eyes taught by the Spirit of God.
The mundane ordinariness of our celebrations—in some places today, there might be half a dozen people in a dilapidated chapel gathered to celebrate the Eucharist—might tempt us to think that the vision offered by the author of Hebrews is an illusion, that it is a fantasy unconnected with our concrete reality.
Today, then, let us pray that our senses be transformed by the Spirit, so that we might be aware, even in the ordinariness and limitations of our particular communities, of the heavenly reality in which we participate.