Prayer: The Mission of the Church by Jean Danielou

Author:Jean Danielou [Danielou, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00742EC9W
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 1996-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

The Gathering of Israel

The dispersion of Israel was a reality before the time of waiting for the Messiah. The Jews had been scattered in the Exile, and Isaiah expresses the desire of God's people for a gathering together and reunification. But through this temporal dimension, the gathering of the visible Israel, there already appears the desire for the gathering of the whole Israel, the new people of God that will encompass all of God's children.

This is an expression of the whole of human hope: humankind is made for God and cannot find beatitude except in union with him. Secondly, humanity is made to live in community. We are not made to live alone, but to develop ourselves in an exchange with others. It is essential to us to be in communication and in communion. In this is the mystery of personal life, which makes of the exchange between persons an essential aspect of existence. This is first realized in the first pages of the Bible, in the union of man and woman: "It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18).

The creation of Eve is the first expression of this community, which finds its fulfillment in children. It is equally true of other forms of communion between people, and with Christ: this aspiration emerges into an intense spiritual communion that is called the body of Christ, whose many members are all in solidarity with each other.

Having said that we suffer from impenetrability, we may also add here that we suffer from division. The impossibility of communion wounds something so deep in us that we end by falling into despair. The number of people who despair of being able to communicate, who feel closed up within an incurable solitude, is immense. Hope requires that we surmount this despair, in the same way that it requires us to surmount the apparent impenetrability.

The impossibility of a total communion, by virtue of impenetrability and of people's constant refusal to be open to each other, seems evidence of the difficulty of making people live together in peace and of the ceaseless recurrence of conflicts. Hope in the Word of God, however, allows us to believe in the possibility of total communion, of perfect harmony, and of openness between people, at the level of a people who would gather together all humanity. This love for others, which is borne in us as a thirst, and whose fulfillment is so difficult, will be wholly fulfilled in the New Jerusalem, which will assemble all of God's people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.