Is This Heaven?

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, August 3rd, 2025:
​Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Colossians
3: 1 - 5, 9 - 11 

Brothers and sisters: if you have been raised with Chrst, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
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In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Chrst is all and in all.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

The first thing that came to my mind when I began to pray with this reading from Colossians is  the movie called Padre Pio (not the one with Shia Labeouf). When Padre Pio arrives at the novitiate house where he will begin his life as a Francsican, there is a sign next to the door that says, “You have died and your life is hidden in Christ with God,” which comes from today's reading.

When I was beginning my vocation in religious life, this verse was tough to hear. I wanted my vocation to go the way I thought it should, even if I had no real clue what a religious vocation should look like. My idea was easier (for me) but definitely not directed toward holiness or eternal life!

An important piece to all of this is the gift God pours out upon each of us: The grace to draw closer to Christ, the grace to live in the world but not of the world, the gift of sacraments that heal and restore me when I mess up but also strengthen me to battle against those things that are not from God.

This isn’t magic; I play a part in my salvation because of the free will God has gifted me. I seek the things above every day in prayer, by starting my day in prayer and finding ways to turn back to that prayerful focus throughout the day; my soul’s attention is then more often turning to the Lord.

Seek the things that are above and give God permission to live and move within you. The grace that comes from the Lord draws me ever closer to this “dying to the world and being hidden in Christ.” 

If you are reading this and haven’t been striving for this life in Christ, now is the perfect time to begin!




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Sister Teresa MacDonald

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