Prayer for Divine Guidance

Heavenly Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit bless and enlighten me as I read, reflect and rest in the boundless riches of salvation that Christ Jesus has won! Abba Father, draw me closer into the Divine Dance with You, Your Son, and Holy Spirit to continually transform my life here on earth to taste life with You in Heaven! Amen.

Reflection

To believe in God is to embrace mystery, not as confusion or a problem but as truth too high, too sublime to fully grasp. After having set forth the wondrous mystery of salvation, the apostle Paul is overwhelmed at God’s ways: “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways” (Romans 11:33). Paul echoes the adoring praise of the psalmist, “God’s greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3). Similarly, Saint Augustine explains in a sermon on the mystery of the Incarnation, “If you understand, it is not God.” (Sermon 117)

There is mystery in everything about God, whether He is flinging trillions of galaxies into place, numbering the hairs on our heads, or bringing prodigals home. God is sheer mystery. He is Three, and yet He is One. He is infinite, and yet a helpless Baby. He is transcendent, and yet makes His home in mortals.

In the shadow of His cross, Jesus prayed the three mysteries of the Christian faith (John 17):

• Trinity: Three Persons united as One
• Incarnation: God and humanity united in the One Person of Christ
• Salvation: Christ united to believers as One

Just as the Three who are One is mystery, and God taking humanity to Himself as One is mystery, so is our salvation. Who can explain it! Who can grasp it! Salvation is far more than being forgiven or holding the promise of heaven: it is to live in oneness with God! Ponder in Jesus’ prayer the mystery of Christ’s oneness with all believers throughout time:

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

Can you read your name in Jesus’ prayer? He prays not only for that small circle of disciples but for all who will believe in Him through their witness: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word…” Jesus foresaw you and wanted you even before you believed!

Watch in Jesus’ prayer: He prays not just that we be good people or rulekeepers, but actually prays that we live in the life and love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…”. The oneness and self-giving love of the Trinity is not just a model we are to copy, but the life, the dance, into which God welcomes us.

All of Scripture reveals God’s longing to make each of us His sanctuary, His dwelling place through which His life flows and His glory is revealed. At the Last Supper Jesus promised His “coming” with His Father to make their home in believers: “we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23). Through Jesus Christ we have been made “God’s temple”, our human bodies “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19).

The world’s religions are about God “up there” and we “down here” trying somehow to “bridge the gap” between heaven and earth. This becomes a spiritual treadmill of trying to pray better, trying to be more committed, trying to be more deeply surrendered, trying to reach God.

Through the mystery of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, God has made us one with Him in such a way that God does not exist without us and we do not exist without God. All of this means that we get to live from having already been included in God’s life, rather than trying to live towards it. Instead of trying to get close to God, we are already included in Him. Oh, the unsearchable depths of the mystery of God’s love for us! Who can grasp this? Who can understand? Thanks be to God!