Thank you, LORD, for letting us stay so closely connected to you.
You turn wine into your own blood. You give us to drink from your very life. We need never be apart from you because you want to live within us. You want to be the source of our life. Your life is not something extra. In fact, we are dry branches without you. Without your precious body and blood we wither and die. And the more we can let these fill us the more we are filled with life. Even if we can't get to mass every day we can still make a spiritual communion. You delight to honor these and file us with your life. There is no limit to the grace open hearts can receive from you.
Without you we can do nothing. We cannot bear fruit. We wither and die. We cannot work to generate this life within. We must simply stay near you. We must simply stay so close that your life fill us. We must stay so close that your word and sacraments fill us with the life for which you have already paid the cost, the life we cannot earn.
Sometimes questions arise. We wonder if we're clinging to you or to our own traditions and ideas. Is it necessary to be circumcised according to the Mosaic practice in order to be saved, for instance? We're used to saying no. But if this were a beloved practice of all of our fore-bearers who understood in it a sign of how close God is to his people we are less quick to dismiss it. Yet at the same time, it seems to present a barrier to the conversion of the Gentiles. It seems to exclude and set apart where God wants to welcome and embrace. It seems that he shares the "great joy" of the brethren about the conversion of the Gentiles.
How do we know? How do we ensure that we remain in you and that your word remains in us?
This question is not quite right. We need to remain in you and let your word remain in us and then we know. When there is a question like this we should draw even closer to you. We should "go rejoicing to the house of the Lord." We should go to where the Apostles and the presbyters meet together to see about matters like this. We should go to the place where you speak and where you feed us with the bread of life and the chalice of salvation. We should go to your very house, to your Church. This is the city which enjoys the "compact unity" of truth. Here there is no danger of us being led astray or departing from your word. We don't earn it. We don't work for it. We just stay in the place we ought to stay. It is all anyone can really ask of sheep, anyway. We aren't smart enough for much else. We needn't be.
I rejoiced because they said to me,
“We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
And now we have set foot
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
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