25 May, 2014
HIM, ME, YOU, AND HIM: this is what Christianity will be all about, Christ tells his disciples. The redemption we receive through Christ is affected and manifested by and through the series of relationships that Jesus reveals through our Gospel today.
'Him, Me, You and Him’: the formula of our salvation.
The first ‘Him’ is the Father. Our Father, revealed through his Son Jesus Christ, uncloaks the heavy mantle of the austere fatherhood of the Old Covenant to manifest his deep love for creation; as Zechariah the father of John the Baptist proclaimed: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel … He has raised up for us a mighty saviour … So his love for our fathers is fulfilled and his holy covenant remembered … The loving kindness of the heart of our God who visits us like the dawn from on high.”
Our Father is a God of love. So much so that, never despairing of his creation and always remembering the love with which he first brought us in to being, he has, since the fall of Adam, devised a plan of salvation that would show the limits of what man can achieve on his own in his adherence to the law, contrasted with the limitless power of God’s love in sacrificing himself for the forgiveness of sins and to unite all of creation in the perfection of his eternal glory.
And we learn of the Father’s love through his Son – the ‘Me’ in our formula. The first relationship in the formula of salvation is that between the Father and the Son. There is nothing in the words and actions of Jesus that is not from the Father, because he and the Father are one. Thus when Jesus gives the new commandment for his disciples to "love one another as I have loved you” he is reaffirming the chief commandment to ‘Love the Lord your God’ as he has loved you in Christ – with all his heart, soul, strength and mind – but with a new twist – that the chiefest demonstration of our love for God should be in how we love one another.
This is the command that Christ urges us to keep in today’s Gospel: to acknowledge the great love of God for man and to reflect that love in our lives and interactions in the world. And by keeping this commandment we fulfil the second relationship in the formula of salvation – the ‘You’ in the formula is you and me and all mankind, and the relationship I speak of is with God himself. For, by keeping his commands, we dwell in God and God in us: “I am in my Father and you in me and I in you."
And the words of the fourth Eucharistic Prayer reveal the identity of the final ‘Him’ in our formula of salvation: “That we might live no longer for ourselves but for him who died and rose again for us, he sent the Holy Spirit from you, Father, as the first fruits for those who believe, so that, bringing to perfection his work in the world, he might sanctify creation to the full.”
The Holy Spirit, then, becomes the final bond or relationship in the formula of salvation, without which there would be no Christianity. For it is the Holy Spirit through whom we have been reborn with the bond of union between man and saviour; and it is the Holy Spirit who makes us aware of God’s presence in us and, through us, to the world by fulfilling the command to love one another.
It is then, through these bonds of love that we are redeemed. The love shown for us by the Father, through the sending of his only begotten Son. The love of the Son for surrendering himself to suffer death for the salvation of the world. The love received through the Holy Spirit, which forms in us a bond of kinship with Christ in baptism and further fills the hearts of the faithful in the sacrament of confirmation to anoint us as true witnesses to the love of God through our words and deeds.
And it is then, through our words and deeds that we embrace the salvation wrought by Christ. Do we allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us for the fulfilment of God’s loving purpose? Do we complete the bonds of love that bind us to God, by both returning and reflecting that love?
Let us pray, then, firstly for faith: that we may see the Father’s great love for us in his Son, Jesus Christ. Let us pray for openness to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives – that Spirit which binds us in kinship with God and frees us from looking to ourselves by affixing the gaze of our hearts on the love of God. And let us pray for strength: the strength to be true witnesses to the love of God through our lives, and the strength to love God as perfectly as he has loved us, through our love for all his people.
It is then that the formula of salvation is accomplished: The Father’s love made manifest in his Son for the forgiveness of sins and the coming of the Holy Spirit to raise us to become adopted Sons in Christ, and to send us forth to complete God’s saving work on earth and bring all men to know and love him as we do ourselves.
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