In today’s first reading Paul opens with a prayer of blessing: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” This prayer of blessing gives us our identity as Christians. This prayer is like the Greeting at the beginning of mass: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This greeting tells us the grace, love, and communion of God is with each one of us. In a similar way Paul tells us that God has blessed us and made us his chosen people through our baptism. His prayer also tells us that we are adopted children of God. “…as he chose us…before the foundation of the world…destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ.”
God gives us this grace through his Son, Jesus Christ. He has redeemed us, that is, he has freed us from slavery to Sin. God gives us this blessing of forgiveness of our sins because God is “rich in mercy.” A little bit later in his letter Paul gives a fuller explanation of this blessing:
“You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived…All of us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh, following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus…” (2:1-6).
In this opening prayer of blessing Paul sums up his theological vision. All is centered on Christ: “In Christ we have redemption by his Blood…to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.” Second, God’s great mercy is revealed in Jesus Christ. God’s love and forgiveness is a grace and a gift from God: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God” (2:8).
We are people who have been blessed with the gift of God’s love and forgiveness. This is our new identity in Christ Jesus. We are called, therefore, to live as gifted and graced people by showing this same love to all, our neighbor, the immigrant, the outcast, and the leper. We are empowered to do this because “God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.”
Image: “Holy book” by stellataneva is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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