…sanctify Christ
as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who
asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence,
keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame
your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame. For it is better to
suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil. For
Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the
unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was
brought to life in the spirit.[1]
In the Catholic Church, for the
Sunday Mass, we have three readings, plus a reading from the Psalms: a passage
from the Old Testament (from the Acts of the Apostles during the eight-week
Easter season), a passage from one of the New Testament epistles, and a passage
from the Gospels. Today, the Sixth
Sunday of Easter, we have readings from Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; Ps 66:1-7,16, 20; 1
Pe 3:15-21; and Jn 14:15-21, which I spoke on yesterday. As soon as my eyes saw “sanctify Christ” in
our passage from 1 Peter, the thought occurred: “How do we sanctify Christ? He
needs to sanctify us.” Upon completion
of the reading, of course, we are told to “sanctify Christ as Lord.” How do we accomplish this?
Of course, the first thing that
comes to mind is prayer, as it should be.
But what do we pray for? In order
to complete any task, first you must gather all the necessary tools. What do we need in order to accomplish the
task before us, in order that we know what to pray for.
Now, some versions will utilize the
words “set apart as” in place of “sanctify.”
They will read, “…set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts,” instead of “sanctify
Christ as Lord in your hearts.” I don’t
think it has the impact that we find in the word “sanctify.” We can separate items on a table in front of
us. We can put some in one group and
others in another. We can even hold one
group more precious than the other. In
the word “sanctify,” there is only one group: Christ and His Holiness. This is why we must be praying constantly and
putting our prayers into practice because we are told: “whatever you ask in my
name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will
do it.”[2] Because we are promised that God will answer
this prayer, we must immediately begin working at putting it into
practice. Because we do not do it
perfectly immediately, we must keep praying—not because God was deficient or
didn’t answer the pray, but because we are deficient due to sin. This is what St. Paul is referring to when he
says, “…work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”[3]
Archbishop John MacEvilly explains: “The
word ‘sanctify’ means to proclaim him ‘holy,’ and endeavor to show him forth as
such to the world. The Apostle adds this
to show that, if the fear of the Lord reign in their souls, they will be proof
against every other base fear which would prompt to acts opposed to his holy
will. These words, as well as the words
in the preceding verse, ‘and be not afraid of their fear, and be not troubled,’
are taken from Isaiah, chap. 8:13, with this difference, that in the latter the
words are, “Sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself,” whereas here it is “the Lord
Christ;” and St. Peter adds “Christ,” probably to show that Christ is ‘the Lord
of Hosts’ referred to by Isaias.”[4]
Secondly, in order to “sanctify
Christ as Lord in our hearts,” we need to know Him, to know Him
intimately. We know Him as Lord and
Savior; now we need to get to know Him, just as a husband and wife
gets to know each other. Once again,
this will take pray, but it will also entail being taught, reading, and
studying. With prayer, God will give us
the capability to learn to know Him. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church
has a tremendous benefit that others do not have: They have Jesus Christ—body,
blood, soul, and divinity—in the Eucharist.
With prayer, we are also being transformed into the image of
Christ. “You are what you eat.”
If we think about, it is pretty
clear. It all begins with Baptism. In Jesus, in the Incarnation, God shares our
humanity in order that we may share in His nature. When we become children of God by virtue of
the water and the Word of Baptism, we are in Him and He in us. Since this is the case, His nature is in us
also—otherwise, we would not be children of God.
Because we are children of God, we
are being transformed into the likeness of His Son. Since we share in His nature, “God is the one
who, for his good purpose, works in [us] both to desire and to work”[5]—if we
do not turn away, desiring the world once again. As Christians, we are “little Christs.” When we know Him, we will be able to always be ready to give an explanation to
anyone who asks you for a reason for [our] hope.
Because God is Creator of all
things, all people, He has created us for each other. When we dislike someone, we dislike someone
God has created and loves and desires to come into the knowledge of Himself. For this reason, when we answer people, we do it with gentleness and reverence. Jesus became Man in order that He could bare
His back to His creation, so that we could beat Him, in order that He could
prove His love to us, save us from our sins, and transform us into His image,
willing to love as He does. Then we
understand what St. Paul is saying when he says, “Do everything without
grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God
without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom
you shine like lights in the world, as you hold on to the word of life…”[6]
From this, the Gospel reading from
John 14:15-21 fits like “hand in glove.”
Because we are desirous of being transformed in the likeness of the Son,
this means that we love Him. “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with
you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a
little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I
live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and
you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is
the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I
will love him and reveal myself to him.”[7]
By virtue of the fact that we cannot
do any of this without first to God in prayer, it is evident that this is a
work of God, done with the cooperation of our wills. Because we see God working in us, we exalt
with the psalmist: “Shout joyfully to
God, all the earth; sing of his glorious name; give him glorious praise. Say to God: ‘How awesome your deeds! Before your great strength your enemies
cringe. All the earth falls in worship
before you; they sing of you, sing of your name!’ Selah. Come
and see the works of God, awesome in deeds before the children of Adam. He
changed the sea to dry land; through the river they passed on foot.
There we rejoiced
in him, who rules by his might forever, His eyes are fixed upon the nations.
Let no rebel rise
to challenge!”[8] Every time God teaches us—mostly by way of
learning from others, giving them an opportunity to love their neighbor—He overcomes
Satan in our lives because Satan is constantly trying to get us to turn our backs
on God. However, God does go against our
wills. This is why prayer is so
important. When we pray, our enemies—Satan
and his cohorts—cringe. We see this
being accomplished in the Acts of the Apostles 8:5-8, 14-17.
All of this results from the fact
that, through the grace of God, we sanctify
Christ as Lord in [our] hearts.
[1] New American Bible,
Revised Edition., (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 2011), 1 Pe 3:15–18.
[2] Ibid.,
Jn 14:13–14.
[3] Ibid.,
Php 2:12.
[4] John
MacEvilly, An Exposition of
the Epistles of St. Paul and of the Catholic Epistles, (Dublin;
New York: M. H. Gill & Son; Benziger Brothers, 1898), 2:343.
[5] New American Bible,
Revised Edition., (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 2011), Php 2:13.
[6] Ibid,
Php 2:14–16.
[7] Ibid.,
Jn 14:15–21.
[8] Ibid.,
Ps 66:2–7.
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