Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 6. Our Holy Father John Chrysostom (the Golden-Mouthed), Archbishop of Constantinople (407)
Polyeleos Feast
Ephesians 2:4-10; Hebrews 7:26-8:2; Luke 8:26-39; John 10:9-16
Read Ephesians 2:4-10
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The background to today’s reading is Genesis 2:17, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” They ate but then they kept walking around and lived out their lives. Where was this immediate death that was forewarned? It happened spiritually, immediately. They were still alive but they were dead, disconnected from God.
The reverse is going on in today’s reading: God “made us alive together with Christ,” “raised us up with Him (Christ),” and, “made us sit with Him (Christ) in the heavenly places.” Seriously? When? We’re not dead yet. We’re still here, walking around, living out our lives. We haven’t been sitting in heaven lately.
Just as surely as humanity spiritually died but still walked around living, a new humanity is now spiritually living, connected to God in Christ where He is, “in the heavenly places,” even though we’re not dead but are still walking around living here.
Today’s reading makes clear the most important thing in our lives: even though we are not yet in eternity, eternal realities are already happening here in the present, realities brought into being by God becoming man and ascending through death to heaven, our identification with Him in baptism so actual that our connection with Christ in eternity is present in the here-and-now. This new humanity you belong to has good works to do, things God prepared beforehand for us to walk in.
Walk into your day, whatever it holds, in peace and confidence that it is a day that has eternal significance because you are in it, keeping an eye open for what God wants you to do, connected to Christ in eternity, alive in Him.