(Please read this Scripture passage first, before the homily.)
The author of the letter to the Ephesians would have us consider the condition we and the rest of the world were in before our conversion. We lived in the flesh, doing the desires and wishes of the flesh. We and the world were by nature children of wrath. We followed the ruler of the power of the air. We had done nothing to earn anything except death.
By using the term flesh, our author is thinking of our human nature, how we are in ourselves; not about our sexuality. Our human nature does not see into the future. It has no sense of a God more benevolent that itself. It has no ability to earn anything good from God. Our human nature is no better than the nature of any other animal when it comes to earning points towards heaven.
The author was building his case. The author wanted us to consider that if we had only our human nature, we were doomed. After the author had carefully laid out the bad news, he announced the good news.
God has always been rich in mercy. God has loved even when we were dead because of our transgressions and sins. God has raised us to life with Christ. God has given us grace, something none of us has merited or earned. God has generously and graciously conferred grace on us, as a free gift, something we have only because God wanted to give it to us.
In other words, the fact that we are holy or that we have done good things, is not a reason for us to boast, brag or consider ourselves better than others. All these things flow from the grace God has given us. They are all gifts from God to us. If we are saved, we are saved by grace, not by our own deeds.
The author laid out a very dismal picture of the world when the world was confined to its own human nature. The author also showed the great results from God’s mercy. What about the world in our day, with a pandemic and a hotly-contested presidential election? Is our world in a more dismal state than it was in the time of the author?
If it is, then the mercy of God has accomplished nothing and the coming of Christ has been in vain. My faith in God tells me that the world is a better place than it was before Christ. This, however, is not because of what we have done or accomplished, but because of God’s mercy at work in us and in the world. This mercy extends from pole to pole, from land and sea to the air and beyond. God’s mercy is everlasting, everywhere and always. It is this mercy that will continue saving us.