Mar 20
if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14
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if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14
"But go, act, be strong for the battle. Why should you suppose that God will cast you down before the enemy? For God has power to help or to cast down."
2 Chronicles 25:8 ESV
2 Chronicles 5:7
tucked into the glow of family | golden-autumn || Msg for Anxious | AOG #ANX
2 Chronicles 2:5 NIV
“our God is greater than all other gods.”
2 Chronicles 12:12
Because Rehoboam humbled himself, the Lord’s anger turned from him, and he was not totally destroyed. Indeed, there was some good in Judah.
After His suffering He presented Himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God. While eating [συναλιζόμενος] with them, He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.
The Acts of the Apostles (1:3-4a)
Through the period after the word "God," which the sentence construction requires, an inner connection is concealed. Luke speaks of three elements that characterized the time spent by the risen Jesus in the company of his disciples: he appeared to them, he spoke to them, he sat at table with them. Appearing, speaking, and sharing meals: these three self-manifestations of the risen Lord belong together; they were his way of proving that he was alive. For a correct understanding of this third element, which like the first two extend over the "forty days," the word used by Luke—synalizómenos [συναλιζόμενος]—is of great significance. Literally, it means "eating salt with them." Luke must have chosen this word quite deliberately. Yet what is it supposed to mean? In the Old Testament the shared enjoyment of bread and salt, or of salt alone, served to establish lasting covenants (cf. Num 18:19, 2 Chron 13:5). Salt is regarded as the guarantee of durability. It is a remedy against putrefaction, against the corruption that pertains to the nature of death. To eat is always to hold death at bay—it is a way of preserving life. The "eating of salt" by Jesus after the Resurrection, which we therefore encounter as a sign of new and everlasting life, points to the risen Lord's new banquet with his followers. It is a covenant-event, and in this sense it has an inner association with the Last Supper, when the Lord established the New Covenant. So the mysterious cipher of eating salt expresses an inner bond between the meal on the eve of Jesus' Passion and the risen Lord's new table fellowship: he gives himself to his followers as food and thus makes them sharers in his life, in life itself. Finally, it is helpful to recall here a saying of Jesus from Saint Mark's Gospel: "For every one will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another" (9:49-50). Some manuscripts add, with reference to Leviticus 2:13: "and every sacrifice will be salted with salt." The salting of sacrifices was similarly intended to add spice to the offering and preserve it from putrefaction. So different meanings come together here: covenant renewal, the gift of life, the purification of one's being for self-offering to God. When Luke summarizes the post-Resurrection events at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles and makes reference to the risen Lord's table fellowship with his followers by means of the expression "eating salt with them" (1:4), on the one hand, the mystery of this new table fellowship remains. On the other hand, though, its essential meaning is made clear: the Lord is drawing the disciples into a new covenant-fellowship with him and with the living God; he is giving them a share in real life, making them truly alive and salting their lives through participation in his Passion, in the purifying power of his suffering. What the table fellowship with the disciples actually looked like is beyond our imagination. But we can recognize its inner nature, and we can see that in the worshiping community, in the celebration of the Eucharist, this table fellowship with the risen Lord continues, albeit in a different form.
Pope Benedict XVI (Jesus of Nazareth: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, pages 270-272), trans. Philip Whitmore.
