Avram

The story reaches the culmination through the Gospel…  And we are left pondering how we fit into the tale and asking for the Grace to be saved…

The Washing of the Feet (Ghislaine Howard)

I recently read the story of a political prisoner in Romania during the 1960s.  Richard Wurmbrand was a political prisoner in Romania who was released in 1964.  He had spent fourteen years in prison and almost three of those fourteen years had been spent in solitary confinement.  Richard described how one prisoner named Avram arrived in the prison with the upper part of his body in a plaster cast.  Once he was left with the other prisoners he pulled a small tattered book from inside the cast.  It was the Gospel of Saint John.  The prisoners had not seen a book for many many years.  Richard later wrote that there was no drug that was more rejuvenating than that book, and no thing more precious than being able to hear about the “Life of Our Lord”.  The book was passed between the prisoners and many memorised it, discussing it daily amongst themselves.

Saint Josemaria wrote, “When you open the Holy Gospel, think that what is written there - the words and deeds of Christ - is something that ... has been gathered, detail by detail, for you to make it come alive in the individual circumstances of your life. Take up the Gospel every day, then, and read it and live it as a definite rule. This is what the saints have done.”

I have been thinking about this today because Christ came to fulfil the prophesies, which is just another way of saying that He came to save us…

“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-19).

And God is the Word and the Word is Truth.  And what does that really mean?  Well, it means that Christ was able to tell a story.  He could build the message up form the foundations.  When we tell a story, we do not just lunch into the climax.  Instead, the story has a whole shape.  We start with an exposition and move through the story until we get to the climax and resolution.  That is what the Bible is like.  The Old Testament is the exposition.  It lays the foundations for the tale that unfolds int eh New Testament.  When Christ enters time and space, He makes room to explain the next steps.  We reach the climax and resolution.  Christ dies and resurrects.  

The story reaches the culmination through the Gospel…  And we are left pondering how we fit into the tale and asking for the Grace to be saved…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.