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Who We Are and Whose We Are – Part 2
Not only are all of God’s acts wise, pure and good, but they could not be done better, nor could a better way to do them even be imagined. God in His infinite wisdom works in a way that could never be improved upon by finite creatures. And given His knowledge, God couldn’t learn how to do a thing better Himself as He went along. He already knows the best way to proceed.
O, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable His ways!
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples who people are saying He is. He asks them not because he doesn’t already know, but to draw them out for their own good. And they offer the popular guesses: some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And then he asks the disciples who they say he is. Peter, speaking on behalf of the twelve, rightly declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Jesus blesses Peter for saying so, tells him that “upon this Rock I will build my church,” and He gives him the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What we need to notice is that Jesus says, “I will build my church” upon this foundation.
From the beginning, God has been at work creating a people for Himself. God has ordered his creation toward a community of faithful people that will enjoy His presence for eternity. It began with Abraham. In Isaiah God says, “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him and I blessed him and made him many”. Listen to what it says about Abraham in the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Abraham had a vision of the people of God, built by God upon a certain foundation coming in the future.
The Church, the Body of Christ, is the community of the people of God that Abraham foresaw. It is what Jesus himself began, built, and continues to build and sustain. It is God Himself building a people for Himself, the work He has been doing from the beginning.
To be continued . . .
Blessings In Jesus,
Fr. David