November 4, 2004

St. Francis used to like to pray in the mountains. He would – literally - climb out of the valley of the daily grind into the heights in order to inhale the fresh air of God’s grace and take in the breathtaking, panoramic vista of God’s perspective on human existence. Even if we’re not able to take a drive or hike into the mountains, its still very important for us to do that spiritually in prayer: to climb “the mountain of the Lord” in order to get a glimpse of the larger picture and so not to get bogged down in pettiness and trapped in insignificant details. One of the difficulties of our spiritual lives is that often our perspective is too narrow and limited. We suffer from spiritual myopia. The remedy is to engage in a session of “perspective expansion.”

That really seems to be what St. Paul is doing with the Ephesians in the first chapter of his letter to them. Pull out your Bible and take a look at it. The first thing he wants us to do from this spiritual peak is to look back beyond the beginnings of history and discover that God chose us in Christ before the world began to be holy and innocent and that He predestined us in love to be His adopted children in Christ. This is our eternal destiny in the heart of God. Then He wants us to look forward beyond the end of history when all things will be brought together again in Christ. He gives us a reality check by reminding us that, because of the sad fact of sin, this will only take place through the redemption wrought in the Blood of Christ.

Next he wants us to look at our own lives and prays that the eyes of our hearts will be opened to see, not what we can’t do on our own, but rather what God can do in our lives through the incomparably great power He exercised in raising His Son from the dead. The power of the Resurrection is at work in our lives, and its capable – as he will write a little further on in the same letter – of doing “immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine” (3:20)!

Fr. Herald J. Brock, CFR
Local Servant, Convento San Serafin, Comayagua, Honduras
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