Dominion and Intimacy
Sunday, July 6, 2008

Readings for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading 1: Zech. 9:9–10

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 145:1–2, 8–9, 10–11, 13–14

Reading 2: Rom. 8:9, 11–13

Gospel: Mt. 11:25–30

Link to Readings

By Father Frank Pavone

Today, the Word of God reveals our Savior to us again, and shows us how He is at the same time mighty and accessible. He has dominion, and yet approaches us on intimate terms. He is our King, Zechariah, says, yet comes meekly riding on an ass. He has dominion “from sea to sea,” and yet, the prophet declares, “your king shall come to you.”

That dominion is expressed in today’s Gospel passage when Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” At the same time, His “coming” is expressed in the phrase “anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” He reveals the Father to us, and so we are swept up, in the Holy Spirit, into the intimacy between Father and Son, as we ourselves become sons and daughters of God in Christ. Hence He can say, “Come to me.”

St. Paul’s words to the Romans express the same dynamic. Christ’s dominion is His victory over death; our intimacy with Him is the fact that “the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.”

God is at the same time frightening and attractive. He is a “mysterium tremendum et fascinans.” We want to run toward Him, like the deer that yearns for running streams, and yet when we see His glory, we say with Peter, “Depart from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.” And it is necessary, in the spiritual life, never to let either of these aspects of God be eclipsed.

All of this leads to the joy to which we are called in the first reading.

We are to “rejoice heartily,” because the dominion of Christ means evil and death have been conquered. This victory, as Paul tells us, comes into our very bodies. This dominion becomes an aspect of our own identity as we are baptized into Christ, “priest, prophet, and king.”

We exercise His kingship through a life of virtue, through resisting temptation and living victoriously over sin in our lives.

We likewise exercise His kingship by working, in His spirit and in union with one another, for the victory of good over evil in our culture and in its institutions, laws, and policies. This is where Christ’s dominion over death is an urgent summons to mobilize for building a culture of life and a civilization of love.

Because the Spirit dwells in us, we are life-givers! In fact, we will either spread life or death. There is no neutrality. It is an easier yoke to both embrace and spread life than death, because we were made that way. We were made to be life-givers.

The yoke of Christ is easier than the yoke of sin, because it is a yoke of intimacy. The Lord who comes to us (as we see in the first reading) and summons us to come to Him (today’s Gospel) transforms us in the process so that we can believe, hope, and love in ways that transcend our human capacity and are rooted in His Spirit.

Moreover, it is precisely through His Spirit that the Son wishes to reveal the Father to us, as He says in the Gospel. What do we learn when He does so reveal the Father? We find the revelation of ourselves—people of life, people of self-giving, people who can love like the Father loves and through whom the Lord can renew the face of the earth!

Father Frank Pavone is the national director for Priests for Life, president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council, and a member of CUF's advisory council. He is a contrubutor to Lay Witness magazine.

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