Season IV: New Heart, New Spirit
February 14—March 27, 2010
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ARISE TOGETHER IN CHRIST
Gracious God, we trust you, knowing that with you all things are possible. Deepen our awareness of your loving presence and saving grace.
Call us to holiness and strengthen our community so that, as one family, we might live the gospel we proclaim.
When we are weak, lift us up so that we can arise together in Christ. We believe that you are doing something new.
Fulfill our hopes and desires. Help us work together with your Son and with one another for the coming of your kingdom.
We ask all these things through Christ our Lord.
Amen. |
This Sunday, as we gathered at the Eucharist, we heard a portion of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is giving us some indication of what Christ’s love and grace can do in us. What Christ’s grace accomplishes is like: a path in the sea, something new, it is like a path in the desert, it is like water in the desert for parched people. In the sixth Session of ARISE Together in Christ we are pondering in prayer and in our faith sharing a section of the book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Here are some phrases from the Scriptural text:
“A new heart I will give you;
I will put my spirit within you;
you shall be my people
and I will be your God.”
This is what the paschal mystery, the death and resurrection of Christ gains for US: a new heart, the Lord’s spirit within us; attaining our true identity as God’s people in Christ! All of this is true of ARISE Together in Christ because it is true of what Christ does for us by his Gospel, by our faith and through the Sacraments. As we come toward the end of Lent, and the end of Season 4 of ARISE Together in Christ, Christ on the cross has his heart opened with a lance – and then Christ, risen from the dead offers us his new heart and his new Spirit as our heart and spirit! May the days of Holy Week renew in us the gift we received in Baptism: a share in the death and resurrection of Christ, so that we can be a living Gospel to others.
"I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God."
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