Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, declares the first letter Peter. To sanctify means to worship and make holy (make room for). We have to treat Christ with reverence and with great respect. How can we do this?
My Dad stood for the underdogs during his life. He helped form labor unions to enable workers to earn better wages. He defended the right of a person with darker skin to attend Mass is our parish.
My Mom often went without so that we kids could have what we needed.
I want to sanctify, to keep holy, my Mom and my Dad by doing things like what they did. To keep holy Christ in our hearts is to do what he did.
What did Christ do? Christ died for our sins to raise us up to God. He died, and rose in glory. If we sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts, we shall die in order to rise again in his glory.
In baptism we were born into God’s family. In this family, God defends those without power, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, welcomes sinners and eats with them. Into this family God has welcomed us. If we sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts, we have to do the same things that God has done.
If we have learned the mystery of our baptism into Christ, we have to go and do what we have learned of Christ. We have to live the way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit live.
If I say that the spirit of my Mom and Dad, together with Christ, pushes me to do what I do, I have to say, at the same time, that I have a long way to go come close to Christ and my parents. One the other hand, I do want to sanctify in my heart the Lord Jesus by what I do.
I want to do what Jesus did: to teach as he taught; to speak as he spoke; to love as he loved; to pray as he prayed; to live as he lived and to die as he died. I want to sanctify in my heart the Lord Jesus.