Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
I love to see my five month old daughter smile. It’s contagious. When I see her smile I can’t help but smile myself. I’m also reminded of Jesus’ words at several places in the Bible (for instance, Matthew 13:3) that to really have faith we must become like children. Sometimes I find myself become so overburdened by the cares of the world and the busyness of daily life that I forget that my life is a gift of God. It seems that what Jesus is encouraging us to do by teaching us to be like children is to get us to treat each moment of our lives as a gift, to prevent us from losing sight of the ways that we are dependent to God. It occurs to me that we can even find joy in this realization if our lives are centered on God and we are living in the light of his presence.
The concept of living in the recognition of God’s presence is very similar to the concept of eternal life mentioned in the gospel reading for today. When we hear the phrase ‘eternal life’ it is often assumed that we will have eternal life only in heaven. It sounds very pie in the sky. It can even seem sometimes as though Christianity is a religion very removed from the present concerns of people’s everyday lives. It is easy when we take this attitude to put our faith into a box that is only taken out on Sunday, and we then go back to our daily lives on Monday. But in the gospel reading for today, Jesus brings the phrase ‘eternal life’ down to earth. “Now this is eternal life, he states, “that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17: 3). So eternal life is something that we can start living now. Jesus does not come just to “save us” in the sense of paying the price for our sins but also to enable us to live more fully and more joyously.
Living out our faith is something that we can do here and now. It is not something that we must wait for heaven to do. A concrete example of this is presented in the first reading for today. In this passage Paul is stating that he has faithfully served Jesus and done what he has done for the sake of the gospel. Paul’s life and ministry is a dramatic illustration of Jesus’ teaching that whoever loses their life for Jesus’ sake will find it (Matthew 10: 39).
How can we do this? How can we grasp on to this eternal life? We can do this by doing what Jesus commands of us: loving God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves, practicing prayer, and participating in the life of the church. This is not an easy thing to be called to do, but it is something that Jesus promises he will help us with. It is significant that we are reading this the day after the feast of the Ascension. Jesus tells us at the end of the gospel reading that he is going away but that what he has done while in the world makes it possible for those whom “the father has given him” to follow his lead (John 17: 11). Moreover he prays for their salvation and looks forward to the time when all believers will be united in God (John 17: 11-26).
- Joel Shickle