October 28, Saint Simon and Saint Jude, Apostles
The joy of the witness
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Eph 2,19-22
When, at the end of the times, the books of the life and of the history will be opened, you – Paul wrote to the brethren in Thessalonica who were converted as the result of his preaching – are our crown: “For what is our hope, or joy or crown to boast of in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming if not you yourselves?” (1Ts 2,19). “You – Paul writes today to the brethren in Ephesus – are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone”. The Paul’s joy, when he writes to the communities he founded throughout the whole Mediterranean basin, will be our own joy, if even one person will come to the faith because of our witness. There is no greater happiness. We live our sin, against which every day we have to fight and which we will have to carry on up to our death, but that person will be our crown and the reason why, with a shot of sponge, all of our debts will be forgiven and we will be able to seat at the table with the saints in the heavenly banquet. We will seat, eat, feast and, at the end of the times, the Lord will rise, bottles of champagne will be uncorked and we will toast with him to the happy conclusion of the history of the world. However, we proclaim today the gospel not to partecipate to that dinner: it is because we cannot give it up, it is for our joy, which is only a small pledge of what we will experience during the heavenly banquet. We have understood that today we had to meditate on this topic when at the start of the prayer, we mistakenly opened the Bible at the chapter 2 of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, rather than to that one to the Ephesians, and we found the sentence quoted at the beginning: “For what is our hope, or joy or crown to boast of in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming if not you yourselves? “(1Ts 2,19). Sometimes it happens to us.