"Jesus Creates a New Household of Faith" Station 12 of the 2022 Lenten Video Series Cross Walk
April 09, 2022
The Cross Walk Lenten Devotional series continues as Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr. contemplates the 12th Station of the Cross - Jesus Creates a New Household of Faith.
The Old and New Testaments offer a gallery of images, metaphors, and pictures that help us grasp the totality of the meaning, purpose, and beauty of the Church. Some of the common ones are the Church as the body of Christ, as the bride of Christ, as the flock of God, and as the Temple of God. In today’s gospel reading, we find another: the church as the Household of Faith.
At the foot of the cross, Jesus initiates a church where anyone and everyone on the way or already established and steadfast in the faith finds a place of welcome, belonging, and inclusion because he reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross. Christ’s Household of Faith is the result of divine grace. We are a single community across the traditional boundaries of culture, gender, and ethnic and social groupings. There is no room for an “us” and “them,” it’s always an “Us in Christ.”
Today, we pray for God’s grace to enlarge our understanding of Christ’s household of faith and the grace to set aside the barriers, hard lines, and markers that exclude and limit the welcome, diversity, and inclusion of people.
The Old and New Testaments offer a gallery of images, metaphors, and pictures that help us grasp the totality of the meaning, purpose, and beauty of the Church. Some of the common ones are the Church as the body of Christ, as the bride of Christ, as the flock of God, and as the Temple of God. In today’s gospel reading, we find another: the church as the Household of Faith.
At the foot of the cross, Jesus initiates a church where anyone and everyone on the way or already established and steadfast in the faith finds a place of welcome, belonging, and inclusion because he reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross. Christ’s Household of Faith is the result of divine grace. We are a single community across the traditional boundaries of culture, gender, and ethnic and social groupings. There is no room for an “us” and “them,” it’s always an “Us in Christ.”
Today, we pray for God’s grace to enlarge our understanding of Christ’s household of faith and the grace to set aside the barriers, hard lines, and markers that exclude and limit the welcome, diversity, and inclusion of people.