Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Are you strong enough? Often we think of strength measured in how much weight a person can lift on the bench press, or perhaps how much intellectual labor or emotional strain one can bear. St. Paul prays in our reading today that the Ephesians be strong enough, but pay attention to the kind of strength he seeks: “…that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19) He prays for a strength that can only come from God the Father, and which has as its only goal “to know the love of Christ.” Are you that strong? On their own, nobody is. Yet, there is, says Paul again, “power at work in us” from the Lord “who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine”. (Ephesians 3:20)
Is this knowledge the fire which Christ has come to enkindle? (Luke 12:49) Such knowledge does not allow the status quo of the world to remain just as it is. In that sense, Christ did not come to bring a false sense of security or peace. Rather, in coming to preach the Father’s love, being Mercy incarnate, especially to the poor, Christ finds many then and are many now who prefer the darkness of their own fiefdoms to the light of the Kingdom He seeks to establish. Am I content with my own strength, my own power, doing only what I can imagine? Let us pray that our minds and hearts be stretched and expanded to conform to the breadth and length and height and depth of the love which Christ has for us, and calls us to live out in service to others.