Miyerkules, Disyembre 5, 2012

From the Taize Community and the Focolare Movement

2 December 2012

Bible texts with commentary
These Bible meditations are meant as a way of seeking God in silence and prayer in the midst of our daily life. During the course of a day, take a moment to read the Bible passage with the short commentary and to reflect on the questions which follow. Afterwards, a small group of 3 to 10 people can meet to share what they have discovered and perhaps for a time of prayer.

December 2012

Acts 20:17-38: Entrusted to the Word
From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus. And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship. (Acts 20:17-38)
At the end of his missionary journeys, Paul wants to meet the leaders of the Church of Ephesus one last time. He had spent several years there. It was a kind of base of operations for him, from which he sought to proclaim the Word of God throughout the province of Asia (see Acts 19:10).
Now the apostle intends to leave that region to go to Rome and to other places he had not yet been able to visit. But first he is eager to go to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. Therefore, rather than stopping at Ephesus, where he knows too many people, from Miletus he sends for the leaders of that Church and awaits their arrival. He talks to them in a very personal way, and his audience responds with great emotion.
Paul reminds the Ephesians of the time he spent with them, and all he went through to call them to “turn to God” and “believe in Jesus”. At present he feels impelled by the Holy Spirit to “testify to the Good News,” despite all the opposition and suffering which lie in wait for him. He expresses his conviction that he will never again see the Churches he founded in Asia. But what matters most for him is to have done everything possible to establish the Word of God among them. He urges the Church leaders to remember his example and entrusts them and their Church “to God and to the word of his grace” (v.32). Then he prays with them and says goodbye.
The Church of Ephesus, at the moment when the founder says goodbye, is thus entrusted to a Word he leaves behind as a legacy. This Word is less a treasure to keep than a dynamic and active force.
This text, with its various allusions to Paul’s future, already indicates his martyrdom, though the rest of the book of Acts does not mention this, in order to focus on the advent of the Word to the “ends of the earth.” At the time when the founder disappears, it is the Word of God making its way throughout the inhabited earth, despite all opposition and obstacles, which remains as the foundation of the Church.
At Paul’s departure, the leaders of the Christian community of Ephesus can discover in the midst of their sadness a joy in the ever renewed discovery of the Word that will continue to build communion.
- What word(s) have I heard which matter for my life?
- What place does the Word of God have in my day-to-day life?
- What supports the life of my local community (parish, youth group...)? What aspects of Paul’s talk apply particularly to it?

‘But to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God’ (Jn 1:12).

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As we welcome and accept one another in mutual love, so we receive the power to become children of God in a relationship that shares in the Son’s own relationship with the Father. Like this we live out the the grace Jesus died for us to have.
This is the amazing new thing that Jesus proclaimed and gave to humanity: to be children of God, becoming God’s children through grace.
But how, and who is given this grace? It goes to ‘to all who received him’ and to those who would receive him in the following centuries. We must receive Jesus in faith and in love, believing in him as our Saviour.
But let’s try to understand more deeply what it means to be children of God.
All we need do is look at Jesus, the Son of God, and at his relationship with the Father. Jesus prayed to his Father as he did in the ‘Our Father’. For him the Father was ‘Abba’, which means Dad, Daddy, the one he turned to in tones of infinite trust and boundless love.
But since he had come on earth for us, it was not enough for him to be the only one in this privileged position. By dying for us, redeeming us, he made us children of God, his brothers and sisters, and through the Holy Spirit he made it possible for us too to enter into the bosom of the Trinity. This means that we too can use his divine words, ‘Abba, Father’ (Mk 14:36; Rom. 8:15): ‘Dad, my Daddy’, our Daddy, with everything this implies: the certainty of his protection, security, surrender to his love, divine consolation, strength, ardour – the ardour born in the hearts of those who are certain they are loved.
‘But to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God.’
We are made one with Christ and daughters and sons in the Son by baptism and the life of grace that comes from it.
In these words from the Gospel there is, moreover, an expression that reveals the profound dynamic within this being ‘daughters and sons’ which must be realized day by day. We have, in fact, ‘to become children of God’.
We become, we grow as children of God, by co-operating with the gift he has given us, by living his will which is wholly concentrated in the commandment of love: love for God and love for our neighbours.
To accept Jesus means, in effect, to recognize him in all our neighbours. And they too will be helped to recognize Jesus and believe in him if they can discern, in the love we have for them, a spark of the boundless love of the Father.
‘But to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God.’
This month, in which we remember specially Jesus’ birth in the world, let’s try to welcome and accept one another, seeing and serving Christ himself in each other.
The result will be that a flow of mutual love, of living knowledge like that binding the Son to the Father in the Spirit, will be established also between us and the Father, and time and again we will feel coming to our lips Jesus’ own words: ‘Abba, Father.’
Chiara Lubich
Published in 1998
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