February 11, 2025 // Perspective

Allow Christ to Abide within You

Father Mark Hellinger

The collect prayer for this Sunday’s Mass is a very simple and straightforward prayer with rich context worthy of our reflection. Indeed, the collect prayer used for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time is ancient, having its source in a sacramentary from the sixth century. A connection that is also helpful is that a modified version of this collect prayer appears in the third option for a collect in the Common of Virgins – a point that connects us right into the heart of the prayer and its meaning.

The prayer reads: “O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.”

Two words in particular stand out here: abide and dwelling. In the Latin text, the word translated as “abide” is the same as it is in the Gospel of John: manere. Perhaps one of the most famous and complete expressions of the Lord about this abiding comes from John 15:4-11: “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

Thus, we can see that the heart that is just and true is not by the human assessment but rather determined so by the standard that the Lord Himself articulates. Right after this passage in the Gospel comes the command to love one another with the love of the Lord. Abiding and keeping the commandments of the Lord are so intertwined that they cannot even be conceptually separated.

Even still, this word “abide” is frequently used to draw out the mode of God’s promise to be presence in the heart of believers – thus, it is a type of earthly presence and the sense that God remains with us even after the Ascension. (It is therefore actually helpful when the word “abide” is used in relation to Jesus’ Eucharistic presence in this world.)

The word used here for dwelling is different; it is habitare. This word is more closely associated with St. Paul’s writings and the indwelling of God through the Spirit. Therefore, this petition is set in the context of divinization – becoming more and more like God – through the complete indwelling of the Spirit that transforms us. This explains the movement of the prayer – that the way in which Christ is present to us (abiding) though our obedience to His teachings (all of them – not just the ones we like or find easy) opens us to the work of His grace, which then strengthens our transformation to be more like Him now and in the future (indwelling).

This is perhaps one of the simplest and complete explanations of the Christian life – our task is to sanctify the world by reconciling all things back to God the Father. To do this, we need the presence of His Son and Spirit in the particular ways they work in our lives (thus, we need to live a full Trinitarian life as Christians). Through the action of God’s grace, first possible because of the open heart that obeys His complete commands, we become little tabernacles of the Spirit – capable of transforming the world.

At the invitation to pray at this week’s Mass, we would do well to call to mind the ways in which we do not have a heart that is just and true – and give those blocks to God for transformation – so that we can (even in just a small way) become more what we are meant to be as Christians – namely, souls dedicated completely to God for the salvation of the world.

Father Mark Hellinger is parochial vicar at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Fort Wayne.