Vigils Reading

A reading from

FR KARL RAHNER

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We are all the work that God the Father has begun in his grace through

Christ Jesus in the Holy Ghost. He has begun the good work in us, we have not.

But he has begun it through our freedom, and it is always questionable, as it

were – it is always the one great all-embracing question, comprehending time

and eternity – whether the work that has been begun will be brought to

completion. And when the Apostle asks this question, when he asks whether

what he has begun with words and tears, with penance, anguish, and all the

power of his apostolic work and suffering, will really be brought to completion

or whether it will run down and atrophy – when he asks whether these people

who have now made a start will one day enter the glory of divine light as children

of the light, asks with fear and trembling because no one is certain of his

salvation – then he lifts up his eyes to God, his heart is filled with confidence,

and he says: I am sure that God, who has begun this work, will bring it to

completion.

And we too may say this, frail and helpless as we are, we whose

Christianity is always running down and atrophying, we whom the stream of

daily life is always threatening to swallow up, extinguishing whatever light and

power, life and glory, has begun to emerge in our Christianity. Instead of

studying ourselves we ought to say: God who has begun this work – and it is not

we who have begun it, not we in our weakness, even in our freedom – God, in the

glorious power of grace, will bring it to completion. And that is our bold

assurance, our splendid sovereign confidence.

St Paul says: It is right for me to feel thus about you all, because, he says –

and here something entirely personal and genuinely human comes into the

power and grandeur of God’s work – because I hold you in my heart, for you are

all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and

confirmation of the gospel.