Many people today say we’re going nowhere. It’s hard to see the world ahead. 

The Letter to the Ephesians, which we’re reading this week at Mass, sees things better. It describes God’s great plan at work from “the foundation of the world,” a plan for the “fulness of time,” a “mystery made known to us” in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We have this “word of truth” this gospel of our salvation, from Jesus himself. The Spirit he promised is the “first installment of our inheritance.”

“First installment,” That’s what we working with now. Still, it’s hard to see the Holy Spirit at work in times like ours. Yet, if we look at the bigger picture, today gets us where we are meant to go tomorrow. The Spirit is at work today. 

“May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might,which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens.” 

(Ephesians 1)

The letter was written, commentators say, not just to the church at Ephesus, but to the church worldwide. So It’s written for us.

Every Monday of the four week cycle of the Liturgy of the Hours we read Ephesians 1, 3-10 at evening prayer, a reminder to see the day, however small and confusing it may be, as part of the great unfolding plan of God in Christ, our Lord.