Sunday 21st March, 2010
5th Sunday of Lent. V. Isaiah 43:16-21. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy—Ps 125(126). Philippians 3:8-14. John 8:1-11.

  
Meditation: mp3 | podcast
Readings: Text | mp3 | podcast

‘All I want to know is Christ …’

In a few sentences St Paul sums up what being a Christian means to him and should mean to us.

He writes that all he wants is to know Christ. ‘Knowing’ means much more than an intellectual grasp of the facts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. For Paul and his contemporaries knowing another meant so to relate to the other that each becomes one in mind and heart with the other, each as it were possessing and being possessed by the other.

With St Paul, I know, Lord, that I can never reproduce completely the pattern of your life, can never become completely like you. Yet I know also that as you graced St Paul, you urge me to respond to your grace by trying as best I can each day to live as you wish me to live, and so ‘to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me’—to possess and be possessed by God eternally.