Thought of the Day June 20, 2019 Our inheritance: imperishable
(Continuing Our Glorious Inheritance)
What
do we specifically know about our inheritance? We read in the First Letter of
Peter what the Spirit has revealed to us about our inheritance. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable,
undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you….”(1:3-4)
Let’s look at those four words: imperishable,
undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.
Imperishable. Everything on earth, basically, is
perishable, because each is made up of destructible material. But our gift of
life is imperishable. Even death does not destroy life but transforms it into
another form of living. Our spirit lives after death. If our life has been
transformed by the life and death of Jesus and we remain in union with him,
then we will live with God forever in the glory of his presence. If our life,
though transformed by the life and death of Jesus, is not in union with God
when death occurs, then we will continue to live but in alienation from God in
the eternal torments of hell. Again, the words of Peter: “You
have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the
living and abiding word of God….” (1:23)
What C.S. Lewis says at end of Chronicles of Narnia could
apply: “For them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in
this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title
page. Now at last they were beginning chapter 1 of the Great Story, which no
one on earth has read, which goes on forever and ever, in which every chapter
is better than the one before.”
It is the fire of the Holy Spirit given to us
in Confirmation and stirred anew in us in the Baptism in the Spirit that allow
the initial spark to burst into flame again and again. Listen to Pope Benedict
XVI who spoke these words on Pentecost of 2011
“So it is worthwhile to let ourselves be
touched by the fire of the Holy Spirit…thus we are enlightened and comforted by
these words of life: Come, Holy Spirit, enkindle in s the fire of your love.
Let us know this is a bold prayer with which we ask to be touched by God’s
flame, but above all we know this flame and it alone has the power to save us.
We do not want to lose eternal life that God wants to give us. We need the fire
of the Holy Spirit.”
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