Reflection & Dialogue: Awareness of our Christian inheritance and pride in it
Today’s readings invite us to reflect on our Christian inheritance and to take pride in it. Moses called on his people to do likewise, and to thank God for the great gift of divine revelation granted them. They were also reminded of the great gift that faith bestowed on them, making them aware of the divine presence, of a personal God near them, not some remote impersonal power or being. They we also reminded that living their religion s they were called to do would make them messengers of the one true and only God. The second reading calls on us to reflect on the supremacy of Christ, sent by God to reconcile all things on earth through him. Christ is head of the Church, his body. In Christ all the fullness of God’s saving power dwells, and though Christ in the Church.
Let us now turn to the general situation in our own day, in much or the Western world and in our own country at any rate. There is a strong movement towards secularism and a growing humanistic and atheistic view of things. God and revelation from God are seen as impediments to individual freedom and human development. There is a growing tendency to see to it that the Church or religion has no say in public life. This holds good in particular for political leaders. But the general believing public are not unaffected. There is lack of enthusiasm for matters relating to belief in Christ or the Church, and a decrease in religious practice. Today’s reading could act as a wake up call, inspiring us to pray for knowledge of the mystery of the supremacy of Christ, bearing fruit in good work.
