God’s inheritance is for all
1 For this reason I, Paul, came to be the prisoner of Christ for you, the non-Jews.
2 You may have heard of the graces God bestowed on me for your sake.
3 By a revelation he gave me the knowledge of his mysterious design, as I have explained in a few words.
4 On reading them you will have some idea of how I understand the mystery of Christ.
5 This mystery was not made known to past generations but only now, through revelations given to holy apostles and prophets.
6 Now the non-Jewish people share the Inheritance; in Christ Jesus the non-Jews are incorporated and are to enjoy the Promise.
This is the Good News 7 of which I have become minister by a gift of God, a grace he gave me, when his power worked in me.
8 This grace was given to me, the least among all the holy ones: to announce to the pagan nations the immeasurable riches of Christ
9 and to make clear to all how the mystery, hidden from the beginning in God, the Creator of all things, is to be fulfilled.
10 Even the heavenly forces and powers will now discover through the Church the wisdom of God in its manifold expression, as the plan is being fulfilled
11 which God designed from the begin ning in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
12 In him we re ceive boldness and confidence to approach God.
13 So I ask you not to be discouraged at seeing the trials I endure for you, but rather to feel proud because of them.
14 And now I kneel in the presence of the Father
15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth has received its name.
16 May he strengthen in you the inner self through his Spirit, according to the riches of his glory;
17 may Christ dwell in your hearts through faith;
may you be rooted and found ed in love.
18 All of this so that you may understand with all the holy ones the width, the length, the height and the depth – in a word,
19 that you may know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled and reach the fullness of God.
20 Glory to God who shows his power in us and can do much more than we could ask or imag ine;
21 glory to him in the Church and in Christ Jesus through all generations for ever and ever. Amen.
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Comments Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 3
• 3.1 Prisoner of Christ. Paul writes this letter from his prison in Rome, but he does not say: prisoner “for the cause” of Christ. He is prisoner of Christ, for he cannot escape from Christ’s continual hold on him, nor from the apostolate that God has destined for him (1 Cor 9:16).
Paul emphasizes what he has meditated on in jail, what seems most new in the work of Christ: this is the “mystery,” or God’s plan calling all people to become a single body, without any racial distinctions. Jesus proclaimed this equality (Mt 20), but the early Christians needed several divine interventions before they were convinced (Acts 10).
The heavenly forces… (v. 10): see commentary on Gal 3:23 and Eph 1:21. We would not be distort ing Paul’s thinking by saying that multi national directors, presidents and the great of this world are going to discover the true face of God, who manifests his glory in his poor and his saints (2 Thes 1:10), through the Church.
How fitting it would be to also express in poetry the wonderment of all nature, in discovering what God’s power has achieved after billions of years. Paul believes he is approaching the end, and we as well in this century where events move faster and faster, and we discover every day new signs of human awareness at a world level.
• 14. And now I kneel… without further delay. Paul moves from his presentation to prayer. Such is the way of the interior person (v. 16) who is not satisfied with thinking about God or talking about him as if he were an object. The Spirit preserves in him the awareness of this Presence that gives him life. As St. Teresa said: “I carry the heart of my God and the God of my heart everywhere.”
The Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth has received its name (v. 15). Our time has greatly devalued “the Father” with the obsession of an authority that would smother the personality of its children. This is not Paul’s way: he marvels before the One who alone is from all eternity. The Father is the source of the divine being, from him comes the order and the mystery of the divine persons. From him the universe draws its riches. Paul, speaking of the common destiny of all peoples, recalls that each one of them, every family, has received its name from the Father, which means its identity and its dignity.
Certainly we must recognize that the word Father no longer has the same meaning as in Paul’s time, when father was given a greater authority and respect. Once woman found her rightful place in the family and in society we are inclined to speak of “parents” rather than of “father.” Yet it is not by chance that God revealed himself in a culture – that of the Hebrews – where God was a masculine figure. Indeed they had already passed the primitive culture in which the woman was the center of family and the religion subsequently gave highest place to a female divinity. Among the neighboring peoples gods and goddesses went together. So God could have revealed to them with diverse faces, but this he did not do. Even if the Bible states that in God are all the riches of paternal and maternal love (Is 49:14), it keeps to the word Father. In so doing it insists on the liberty and initiative of God in all that he does: the universe and we ourselves have not come from God as a spontaneous “emanation”, as naturally born from the bosom of the all-powerful divinity. Everything was a lucid and creative decision.
Therefore, the family, with parental authority, is the basis of society, and fatherhood is also seen in the Church: the succession of bishops, with the authority of the hierarchy not dependent on people’s votes, is part of the divine order in the Church. A society which does not acknowledge fathers and which scorns marriage, as well as “spontaneous” churches, are devious structures.
The love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge (v. 19). Paul is certainly thinking of the love Christ has shown and continues to show him personally even in proportion to his trials. The knowledge and experience of this love surpasses all that could ever be imagined. We shall not find it through books and study or transcendental meditation. It will be freely given to us, on God’s initiative, on the way of love of which Christ made himself the model and the center.