New Covenant: the Promise and the potholes

January 28, 2019

Monday, 3rd week in Ordinary time

Hebrews 9:15, 24-28; Mark 3: 22-30

Jesus' promise of the New Covenant is a promise of eternal salvation. The Word affirms that this salvation is given to all, by that sacrifice once and for all, on Calvary. Every one is promised forgiveness and salvation, but every person has to claim that salvation for oneself. The greatest of gifts, the New Covenant of Salvation is guaranteed to all but we can be caught up in our own potholes, refusing to claim it all for ourselves. There can be three blocks that could prevent a person from personalising this salvation. 

The first is the social block - that the background and experience handed down does not allow one to experience this salvation. This can be overcome by appropriating a new experience that can change the entire life of a person. The society calls this conversion, may be from one faith experience to the other, but fundamentally a change of vision.

The second is the personal block - that the weaknesses within us, the limitations that we personally experience keep us away from God. This can be worked out of too, with the grace of God and with the help that God sends our way, like sacraments, persons and processes of varied nature. This too is called a conversion, an internal, personal conversion!  

The third and the most dangerous is a psuedo block, because of which I deliberately keep myself away from God. It is my lack of openness and bias against anything spiritual that takes me far from the promise of the New Covenant. I go around demonising whatever and whomever I do not like - there is no remedy to it because it is my choice and no one else or nothing else can save me! This is the state that Jesus warns us against in the Gospel today.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the saint we celebrate today can be easily considered the most important of all the theologians who have explained the Church's teachings. He has written an incredibly voluminous literature, expounding the truths of faith. But at the end of it all, when he had an intimate experience of God, he exclaimed that all that he had done till then were almost rubbish! He had nothing that could block not even his own tremendous contribution to faith - He experienced God and felt himself as a child of the New Covenant!