Fourth Sunday of Lent 2018

• 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23
• Psalm 137:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6
• Ephesians 2:4-10
• John 3:14-21

Ephesians 2:4-10

Sisters and brothers:
God, who is rich in mercy,
because of the great love he had for us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
brought us to life with Christ – by grace you have been saved -,
raised us up with him,
and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,
that in the ages to come
He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace
in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;
it is not from works, so no one may boast.
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them.

From Fr. MacEvilly:

In this chapter, the Apostle applies to the Ephesians in particular, what he had said in general regarding the power of God exerted in the spiritual resuscitation of sinners (chap. 1 verse 19). He depicts the wretched condition of the Ephesians when dead in sin; and he shows, that the same description applied to the Jews as well as to the Gentiles (1-3).

He also shows how, through the infinite mercy of God, they were resuscitated unto a spiritual resurrection-of which the resurrection of Christ was the model-and made sharers in his heavenly kingdom (4-7).

He reminds them, that those favors were purely the result of God’s gratuitous goodness, without any merits of theirs; for, their justification was a kind of new creation, and as well might the world glory in its production out of nothing, as they, in their new spiritual existence (8-12).

In order to inspire them with due feelings of gratitude, and to stimulate them to serve God with greater fervor, he tells them, in the next place, to keep always in mind, their former spiritual destitution, and wretched state, and their present blessedness secured for them through the merits of Christ; and he explains how Christ brought about such exalted ends (11-19).

From all this he concludes, that they are no longer strangers, but domestics of God; and he illustrates the union that subsisted between the Ephesians and the rest of the faithful by the metaphor of a spiritual edifice of which they form a part, having been built on Christ and his Apostles.