Marked for Christ: the Necessity of Baptism
Finding happiness 4: The Mystery in Belonging
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
There is a mystery to being in this qahal of Jesus; to being one of His.
People are seeking to be…a ‘people’. We seek to belong to a group of ‘others’ who are recognizable by how they live out their beliefs; how they walk the talk. Longing to be part of a spiritual society within the world, we seek more than community. We have an innate desire for communion. It is written into our very nature. Although with technology the modern global society permits us to connect with others around the world, the transnational nature of such a society cannot fulfill this desire.
The understanding of ‘church’ held by the biblical Jews is also fundamental to our Christian faith. They understood the “people of God’ to be in a spiritual union with God and unity with one another through that. Because of this, prayer was the function of their faith. Rather than being a collective of people with shared beliefs and rituals (as the Greeks or Stoics believed), for the Jews they were unified in a spiritual unity while still maintaining their own individual identity. The pagan view focused on being interdependent, recognizing the reciprocal effect one person had upon the other in community. God’s people were interconnected through Him.
Indeed, God is a mystery. He is the mystery we were created and predestined to spend eternity with. “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom” (Luke 22:28-29). He made a kingdom of us for our God! In this crazy world where loneliness, depression, anxiety and suicide are epidemic, how might society be healed if people knew they too were created for this Kingdom?
We also know that Jesus did not do this for Himself. He always does the will of the Father, the One who sent Him (John 5:30). Courage, strength, help of those in peril, relief of the burdened…these are all things God Himself desires and designed for each of us personally. God, who is endlessly and eternally self-giving, “hast been pleased to be reconciled unto us by His Blood”. God does not want to lose any one of us for “this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it [on] the last day” (John 6:39).
(Keep an eye out for our next post from Belonging: An Invitation to Happiness for Millennial Catholics)
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About the Author
A cradle Catholic, Debra Black received the gift of completing the full 19th annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1998 under individual direction of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She repeated the exercises in 2001 and remained an Associate to the Loreto Sisters through 2009. In 2015 she was missioned through the Lanteri Center for Ignatian Spirituality to provide spiritual direction and lead the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. She also is a perpetual member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a contributor to SpiritualDirection.com and CatholicMom.com. In addition to over 40 years of professional experience including 33 years of leadership in international higher education, her public service roles have spanned city commissioner, pregnancy clinic board of director, youth and college ministry, public citizen activism, and homeless street ministry. Debra is author of Belonging: An Invitation to Happiness for Millennial Catholics. For spiritual warfare: Kick Butt! The Quick Guide to Spiritual Warfare: Frontline Defense Strategies for Everyday Life; for spiritual growth: The Life Confession: A Discovery of God’s Mercy and Love, and for Advent preparation: Something is different…Advent meditations from the Gospel of Luke.
