You are Fellow Citizens with the Holy Ones.
“Brothers and sisters: You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the house of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.”
It can be very tempting to say, “If only it were true.” It is very easy to ask how any of us can be “fellow citizens with the holy ones.” There has been a war raging in Ukraine for over a year. Israel and Hamas have commenced armed conflict with atrocities on both sides. Otherwise right-thinking people of different faiths are unable to agree that it would be a good thing to protect women and children, that it is essential to provide humanitarian aid to those who need it. Disillusionment with those who were once role models for us makes us feel discouraged. There seem to be few places to turn for inspiration and light; at least it is not hard to adopt that stance.
He Spent the Night in Prayer
After the Parkland school shooting in Florida, some students were heard to say that praying for the victims was fine but when were people going to do something to stop the shootings. Yet prayer and fasting are the only adequate responses to the suffering we see.
It is no accident that calls for prayer and fasting have been so frequent since the war in the Middle East began. They are the means by which we will get underneath the violence and pain to the place where we enter “a temple sacred to the Lord” and where we will find answers. The Gospel recounts that Jesus spent the night in prayer to his Father, seeking counsel on whom to choose as his closest confidants from among his many disciples. This, too, is no accident.
When morning arrived, Jesus knew whom he would call, and he knew that there would be a cost to each decision. We have only to look at what happened with Judas to see this. We will find clarity in prayer and fasting, and we may find suffering as well, which brings us into solidarity with others suffering around the world and leads us into the “dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
