Mt 17: 9a, 10-13
As they were coming down the mountain, the disciples asked Jesus, “Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He replied, “Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
God Dwelling Among Us
We go day to day doing the next good thing and then we hear: Consecrate yourselves and be holy for I am holy (Lev.11:44). This presents us not with a problem to solve, but a mystery to be pondered and appreciated.
The struggle is not simply because our all-wise God has chosen to redeem us and make us holy by solidarity – first of all with himself, which is why the Son of God took flesh and remains in it – and then with one another, the latest shape of the togetherness that infinite love has been devising through the ages. It began with telling Abram, “I will set my dwelling among you – ever present in your midst” (Lv.26:11) and that made him holy. And then through ages and ages, in Egyptian and Babylonian exiles, Greek and Roman oppressions, and finally to God’s personal intervention in Galilee and Jerusalem.
We know how that went: He was born, died, rose and went back into eternity and left Jew and pagan to realize that the sacraments of this “dwelling among us.” The Ark of the Covenant, the great Temple in Jerusalem, the great scrolls of the law are all now overshadowed by one thing: the communion of saints, the community of believers in Christ – our flesh, all of us together, handed down person to person for nearly two millennia from Jesus’s own time. This is how our mighty God is dwelling among you and it’s how we know him: in one another.
—Fr. Joseph Tetlow, SJ, is an author and recognized authority on Ignatian Spirituality, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and the Jesuit practice of discernment. He is a member of the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province.
Prayer
Christ has no body now but ours,
No hands, no feet on earth but ours,
Ours are the eyes with which He looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but ours.
—Attributed to St. Teresa of Avila
Pray with the Pope
The Holy Father’s Monthly Prayer Intentions Brought to you by Apostleship of Prayer the first Friday of each month.