Commemoration of the First Six Ecumenical Councils, Tone 8; the Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene; Return of the Relics of the Priest-Martyr Phocas
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Hebrews 13:7-16; John 17:1-17
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
I remember as I waited for the birth of my second child, our now oldest daughter, honestly being perplexed as to how I could love her as much as her older brother. I remember thinking that there just would not be enough room in my heart to love this new arrival as much as I loved our son. Of course, when she arrived I didn’t have to think twice about this, and I can’t imagine my life without her. My heart was not divided into smaller parts with our following children, it only grew with each new arrival! Love was multiplied.
The scandal of Christianity is not the idea that a God exists, or even that there is only one True God. The scandal is that He is our Father. This is the way that Christ teaches us to address God in our prayers, He shows us how to address His Father and our Father in the prayer He taught us. An All-Knowing Cosmic Creator? Ok. An All-Seeing Judge over the universe. Alright. But that this God has adopted us into His family? That’s something else.
The Second Vatican Council Fathers teach us: “The Lord Jesus, when praying to the Father ‘that they may all be one … even as we are one’ (Jn 17:21–22), has opened up new horizons closed to human reason by implying that there is a certain parallel between the union existing among the divine persons and the union of the sons of God in truth and love. It follows, then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 24).
In other words, Christ prays that His disciples may be one with the same type of “Family” unity that unites the Trinity and calls us to lay down our lives for the other! When you see the priest raise His arms during the “Our Father” in Liturgy, remember that we are children of God, reaching up to a Father who loves us and who has already done everything to save us!