Lectionary Devotions by Father Gethin

The Cross of our Saviour’s agony is the well-spring of our glory… the Cross always stands before us, and leads us on our pilgrimage through time, from death to life, as the emblem of our hope and courage, and the promise of our final peace and blessing…

So Paul wants us to be clear of these two things: that our conversion restores us to our God-given life and identities, our individual places in His kingdom, so that, as the subjects of that kingdom, we may be the ministers of its peace to one and other…

In our wretchedness Christ comes to minister His gifts of healing and redemption, and restores us to new life at His own expense…

The lessons for these middle weeks of the Trinity season teach us how we may receive, and how we are reformed and renewed by the gift of our redemption. This follows in an orderly way from the first weeks of Trinitytide, where we came to know more clearly the impediments to our faith, and the ways we must be converted, in order that we might find ourselves prepared to receive fully the gift that God offers in Christ.

In the course of our growth in faith, we come to find that salvation is not only a matter of how the “sin which so easily besets us” has been overcome in the humility of our Lord’s Passion; salvation is also our direct experience of Jesus meeting us in our immediate and personal need and brokenness…

Such an encounter with the divine goodness will only be a measure of our fallen distance, our sinful shortfall from heaven, and so at best it will be a cause for our hope, that God will show us how we ought to live, in spite of our failings…

Today Paul wants us to see more clearly the true depth and significance of our calling, first by way of a summary of the Gospel, and then by the example of his own experience…

Taken together, today’s lessons recall both the foundation of our Christian life, in the redeeming event of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion… and also the means whereby we come to enjoy the fruits of that Redemption…

Our lessons this Sunday direct our thoughts and prayers towards the good outcome of our faith, summed up in St. Paul’s wonderful phrase, “the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man for the common good.”

This week, we find the same theme from last Sunday—our calling to obedience, and the spiritual fruit our faithfulness ought to bear—now spelled out in the practical example of Israel in the desert: “they did all eat the same spiritual food, and did all drink the same spiritual drink…