Fr Matthew Reese

“Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
—Romans 5:1-7

Dear Friends in Christ,

In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul is writing to the Church in Rome on the eve of a great crisis. Generally dated by scholars to have been written between AD 55 and 57, this epistle comes in the early years of Emperor Nero’s reign, but before the Great Fire in AD 64, after which a new and violent period of Christian persecution began.

The early Church was riven with disputes, about the significance of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, about the nature of salvation, and between Jewish and Gentile disciples, to name a few. And it was assailed from without, by authorities both religious and secular. Paul was writing to a community facing immediate, existential threats; it’s no surprise then that his exhortation to endurance and hope has spoken across the generations—and indeed continues to speak—to Christians under siege around the world.

But the phrase which speaks so powerfully to me today is the first one: “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“We have peace with God.”

What does it mean for us to have peace with God? When have we felt that peace recently? (If we have not felt it recently, what are the practices of prayer that can ground us back in it?) Where have we noticed the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives. How has our faith been challenged, or strengthened, in the midst of our present trials? In the Church, in our nation, in the world?

Paul exhorts us to endurance. Paul exhorts us to hope.

But it is something greater, something deeper, something more totalizing, which brings us into the peace of God: it is our faith. Faith that “while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.”

Yours, faithfully,

—Fr Matthew