Ephesians 1:11–23 opens with a declaration of inheritance, which is not written in the language of property or privilege, but in the language of purpose. “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance so that we might live for the praise of God’s glory.” This isn’t about securing our place in heaven or claiming ownership over grace. This is about discovering that we already belong. We belong to one another and to God.
This passage invites us to imagine “inheritance” not as exclusion but as participation. God’s plan is "to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” The universe is being drawn together, not divided. God’s dream isn't a gated kingdom. It is a healed cosmos.
When Paul prays that the “eyes of your heart may be enlightened,” he reminds us that faith is not blind assent but, rather, a kind of seeing. Enlightened hearts see through systems of domination, nationalism, and fear. Enlightened hearts recognize the divine image in strangers, refugees, and those our culture often overlooks. Enlightened hearts see that God’s power, “immeasurable and great,” is not the power of conquest but the power of resurrection and of life rising again where death once ruled.
The power that raised Jesus from the dead and “seated him at God’s right hand” is the same power now animating the body of Christ here, as Saint Theresa observed, in the church. Our church cannot be confined to steeples or denominations. In a world torn by greed and violence, the church becomes every community that lives resurrection in defiance of despair. It is every act of hospitality that interrupts exclusion, every movement that lifts the lowly, every table where love breaks bread with justice.
When Paul describes Christ as “the head over all things for the church,” it is not to crown a monarch but to describe the heartbeat of a living body and “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” The life of God is pulsing through creation, still filling and still uniting. We are always called to live as if heaven and earth are already being reconciled in love.
This call is not naïve optimism. It is the daring conviction that love is the deepest law of the universe in the tension of history and the understanding of resurrection as a power constantly at work. Hope is not waiting for heaven to come; it is joining God in making heaven visible here at this moment.
So may the eyes of our hearts be opened to the inheritance we share. This passage makes me want to hear the God's call and see through the power of love that fills all in all.
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