Part One
THE FIRST AND THE LAST

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 22:13) These words of Jesus in the book of Revelation encompass the story of God’s people, the Church.

Our story, the salvation history of mankind, begins with God. From the first words uttered by God at creation, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), to the last words breathed by Jesus on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), the story of the human race begins and continues in God. From the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles at Pentecost to the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time, the story of God’s family, the Church, is first, last and always the work of God.

All that we are begins in God, who created us in his image and likeness. Our end, our goal and purpose as his creatures, is also in God, who shapes us and molds us as a potter molds the clay (Isaiah 64:7).

Christian faith thus begins and ends in God. To allow God to make faith a living part of our life, we must seek to know him, to make a home for him within our hearts. As we become the clay in his hands, it is his love and mercy, his wisdom and forgiveness that mold us and fashion us into his sons and daughters, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Through Abraham, God revealed himself to the Jewish people as One God. He brought Abraham from Mesopotamia (the Land of our ancestral fathers) to a new land to make him the father of a new people. God gave to Moses and to the Jewish people the Ten Commandments, which first make this declaration that there is one God only, and that the Lord is God. At these moments in which God chose the growing Jewish nation to be his people, he revealed himself as the one and God, and he revealed his statutes and commandments as his special gift to his people.

The Jewish people lived in a cultural climate where their contemporaries believed in many gods, deities who often captured the worst of human nature in their character but yet were mute and impotent, unable to speak or act on behalf of those who put their faith vainly in them. Time and again the Lord God spoke and acted on behalf of his chosen people, so that the Jewish nation itself said, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?” (Deuteronomy 4:7) They came to recognize the Lord as powerful and yet loving. The God of all creation was interested in them in a special way, so much so that, in the fullness of time, from them a humble virgin gave birth to God’s Son.

Today, we too live among people who have “gods” other than the one, true, living God. Money, power, sex, drugs, food, alcohol, possessions, fame, even other people, perceived rights or causes – these are the modern gods that compete for the attention of today’s people, making them slaves to their own vain whims. They even distract Christians from the way of life Jesus taught us. Yet no more than the false gods and idols of millennia past are these false idols of today able to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart.

The words of the Church Father Saint Augustine from centuries ago are as true today as when he first put pen to paper: “our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” Only in God can the mind and heart of man find peace, strength, hope, forgiveness, love, belonging, tranquility, and fulfillment. Only in the One who is our beginning can we move toward the end and purpose he created us for: to live with him in the place he has prepared for us from the beginning of the world, a place of utter peace and joy.

Each time we worship, the words of the creed reaffirm the basic beliefs that make up the core of our life of faith, and the Eucharist binds us in God’s very life. We believe in one God, the Father almighty; and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins and risen from the dead; and in one Holy Spirit, the life-giving Spirit of Truth; and in one, holy, apostolic, and catholic Church. In that Church we receive one Baptism for the forgiveness of our sins, and as members of that Body of Christ we place our hope in the God who will raise us up to life forever with him.

How do we live each day as people of God so as to live forever in His presence? It is not just reciting words and going through actions. It is not merely saying one thing while we do another, or promising to act one way and instead failing to live up to the promises we have made. It is, more than anything, a matter of following him as disciples of Christ, and of going where his life on earth did not see him walk, of doing what he left up to us to accomplish. By allowing the words of the Gospel and the life of Christ to work a sound conversion in our lives, we become ambassadors for Christ, as Saint Paul teaches (2 Corinthians 5:19), bringing his Word, the reflection of his presence in the world, and the living Community of faith to all we meet.

In this, the gift of reconciliation between God and man worked by the God-Man Jesus Christ, once for all, becomes a reality in our lives. Christ works through us, bringing his life into the lives of all those who see us, who hear the words we speak, who witness the acts we do, that they may realize it is Christ who motivates us sinners to bring his forgiveness, mercy, and new life to the world.