Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 8. Holy Apostles Erastus, Olympus, Rodion and those with them.
Ephesians 4:1-6. Luke 10:25-37.
Read Ephesians 4:1-6
If only someone or something could bring us all together and unite us! There are so many things we can rally around, so many well-meaning people. But time and again, as good as they can be, humanly perceived uniters can become, in isolation, sources of division, leaving us still yearning for more.
Our temporal experience of that eternal unity we long for is only to be found in participating in the life of the Holy Trinity: “one Spirit…one Lord…one God and Father”. The Holy Spirit animates the “one body” of Christ, the Church; to participate in the life of the Spirit, participate on the life of the Church. The “Lord” is Jesus Christ, the one by whom we access “the one hope that belongs to your call” through “one faith, one baptism”; to participate in the life of the Lord, participate in your own faith, living out your baptism. The Father is “God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all”; to participate in the life of the Father, participate with Him in all your relationships with everyone, everywhere, all the time.
But how are we, who can be so fractious, to participate in the life of “the Trinity, one in being and undivided”? Today’s epistle reading begins by imploring us to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called”. But this is not a worthiness of elevation of self, it is a worthiness of “lowliness”. Jesus has shown us how to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity: “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” (Philippians 2:5-7)