Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/14/24 Nunc Coepi: Breaking Agreements

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Homily from the Third Sunday of Easter. The first step is to stop. Once we realize that we have to repent...that we are called to "change our minds"...the first step is to stop. To examine what it is that we are thinking and to which thoughts, sins, and false images of God we have made agreements with. And then to break those agreements in order to say "Now I begin". Mass Readings from April 14, 2024: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 Psalms 4:2, 4, 7-91 John 2:1-5a Luke 24:35-48

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

He reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Chapter 24 verses 35 through 48. The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, Peace be with you. But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.

Then he said to them, why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet. that is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have. And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

While they were still incredulous for joy and amazed, he asked them, have you anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of baked fish. He took it and ate it in front of them. He said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and Psalms must be fulfilled.

then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

The gospel of the Lord. Wait you to have a seat. So the big news here on campus is that there are two weeks left of classes and then a week of finals, and it's the end of this school year, end of this academic year. And it's one of those situations where you probably, if you remember this going to school, whether that's elementary school, high school, or even college, you know that this last season reveals kind of the truth about some things.

It reveals whether, it reveals the reality of the semester, reveals the truth of how this year has gone. And I think a lot of times, you know, when we come to endings, that's the ending of any season, whether that be academic seasons or seasons in life, come to the end. And at some point, we realize the truth. And sometimes the truth is, at the end, we realize we're kind of behind the eight ball. And sometimes we realize that we come to the end, that we ask the question, how do I finish strong? I mean, especially, how do I finish strong when I hadn't started strong? Like, how do I finish well when I hadn't started well? And I was

thinking about this, especially because here we are starting this new season, this new season of Eastern. And that means that there's a whole crew of new Catholics throughout the world, not only here on campus, throughout our diocese, our country, throughout the entire world, there's all these new Catholics who just ended this transition of becoming Catholic, and now there's this new start. And I just think about this, just think about, what do I do when it's time to move forward? What do I do when it's time to start? Because almost every start means something else had to end.

What I mean by that is, okay, go back to the first reading and the gospel today. the first reading, here's Peter. This is the day of Pentecost, right? Peter has gotten up, and he is preaching to these Jews in Jerusalem. And one of the things he says is he says, okay, there's the truth. The author of life, you put to death. And you think like, okay, well, now things are, now we're in big trouble. Like, now it's game over. Because here's the truth. Yes, God showed up, the author of life. And when God showed up and made himself vulnerable, you killed him. If there's anything that would mean, okay, that's a bad finish. That's a bad ending. it would be that game over.

Or even here are the apostles. They're gathered in Jerusalem, and Jesus, the resurrected Lord appears, and you realize that they know the truth about themselves. And they also knew the truth about him. The truth about themselves was that, wait a second, we bailed. The truth about you, Jesus, says, you died. And so again, if there's anything that would,

they are looking at Jesus, like, we bailed, we failed you, we failed you, we betrayed you, we left you, abandoned you. Game over. And so all these things, and again, this could be our experience. I know that on campus we've had a lot of opportunities to go to confession. We had confession on Palm Sunday. We had confession last weekend at Divine Mercy Sunday.

We had all these opportunities for confession, these opportunities for like renewing our faith in the Lord Jesus. But I know the reality is that sometimes that one confession is not enough. Right. In this short season between now and Divine Mercy Sunday one week or between now and Palm Sunday, three weeks, we could have experienced a lot of just falls. We could look at our lives and realize, okay, it feels like this, I failed and game over.

But the reality, and this incredible news of this season of Easter, is that Jesus shows up to the apostles. And yeah, they bailed and they failed. And Jesus says, okay, it's not game over. It's time to start over. That way when Peter speaks to these Jews in Jerusalem, yes, the author of life you put to death, game over. And he's like, no, no, no, actually start over. In fact, the middle reading today, from 1 John, right, from John the Beloved, what he says

is he says, Beloved, I'm writing this to you so that you don't sin. That is the prayer. That's the hope. That's the reason I'm writing this. But he says, but if you do sin, remember, you have an advocate with the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, this is so real. This is so significant.

This, when we get to the place where we feel like, no, it's game over, the Lord Jesus, because of what he's done for us. actually speaks into our lives and says, no, no, no, it's time to start over. So that's what we're going to talk about for the next four weeks. This last season before, as the end of the school year comes to an end, we're going to talk about this. And in fact, there's this Latin phrase. It's a two-word Latin phrase. In English is three words, but in Latin it's these two words by a man named Benerable Bruno Lanteri.

Now, Bruno Lanteri, he had said this, you know, Bruno Lanteri, his life was marked by troubles, difficulties, kind of like every person's life and oftentimes his life was marked by failure. But it wasn't marked by discouragement. In fact, Brunelancheri's two-word phrase in Latin was the phrase, Nunk-Cepi. And in English, those words are, now I begin. Here's what he said. He said this.

He said, if I should fall, were it a thousand times, I will not lose courage. I will not be troubled. But I will always say immediately with peaceful repentance, Nukchepi. He said, I will always say, immediately. immediately with peaceful repentance, now I begin. And this is, again, for the next four weeks, we're going to talk about this, Nunkchepi. What is it, to live this?

What is it to live, to walk in this actual hope that wherever we're at, no matter how close we are to the finish or how far we are from the start, that at any given moment in our lives, as Christians, we get to say these words, Nung Chepi, we get to say these words, now I begin. But how do we do this, right? How do we actually say, okay, wherever you are, now I begin. Well, I think it's because how we start is what it says in virtually every one of the readings today and what Venerable Bruno says.

He says, you know, Peter says, yeah, here's the truth. The author of life you put to death. So repent. Jesus says, I come, I'm coming to you and I'm going to send you out into the world. You're going to be witnesses and you're going to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Bruno Lentery, what's he said? Even if I fall a thousand times, I will not lose courage. I will not be troubled.

I will always say immediately with people. peaceful repentance, now I begin. So here's the first move. The first move of now I begin is repentance. So we have to look at this. What is it to repent? So in the scriptures, that word repentance is in Greek, right? It's the word metanoia.

And metanoia is a little Greek lesson. Metanoia means to change your mind. So meta is to change, right? And noia is what you think. Basically, here is Jesus. Here is Peter. Here is the Gospels. Here is Bruno, Bruno, who says, basically,

if you want to begin again, if you want to say, okay, now I begin, we have to start by changing the way you think. We have to kind of recognize, okay, what is it that I believe? And oftentimes, again, and often, in order to say, now I begin, before we begin, the first step is to stop and examine what is it that you think? Because I think that's a lot of times we find ourselves in a place where we actually, I don't know what I think. These thoughts are happening to me.

These thoughts are kind of, sometimes the thoughts even assail us. They attack us. They accuse us. And we don't even know what these thoughts are. That's one of the reasons why Scripture says, when it comes to repentance, it says, now take every thought captive in Jesus Christ. So what we're going to do in order to be able to be able to say, now we begin, that wherever we're at, we're going to stop. And we're going to assess, okay, what is it that I think?

Because I'm afraid, I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid too many of us aren't free to begin because we've made agreements with things that are not true. Again, we'll say that again. We're not free to begin because we've made agreements with things that are not true. On three levels. We've made agreements with lies that have come against us. We've made agreements with sins that tend to own us.

And we've made agreements with untruths about who God is in our lives. So what I mean about this? What do you mean about agreements? Here's what agreements are. agreements are stories or messages that we believe. That's it, very simple. There are stories and messages that we believe. And most often these agreements are made, again,

they're agreements with lies, they're agreements with sins that own us, and they're agreements with this vision of who God is for us and who God is in our lives. And here's the thing. These lies, they have such power. They have power because of one thing. So I've thought, said it like this before in the past,

but I'll say it again. If someone tells you a lie or an accusation about yourself that's completely false, it might hurt, but it would hurt like a pin, right? It hurts like a pin going in. The pin comes right out. It's like, ouch, that hurt, but it's completely false. So like, it momentarily hurts. Then you realize, like, that's not true.

The power that lies have, these agreements have over our hearts is almost often because there's some kind of data that proves some aspect of it to be true. right so you and I we wouldn't believe lies that are completely lies as often as the liar whether that's the evil one or the world or even our own minds and hearts as often as the liar can produce some kind of data some kind of proof as long as the liar can show some kind of receipt that means that that that pin is not a pin in where it's it's like a hook it has a barb on it so the lie gets stuck in our hearts a lie gets stuck in our minds because there's some truth there and here's the thing the moment we believe that lie, the moment we believe that accusation is the moment we've made

an agreement with it. That then it becomes the lens through which we see the world, the lens through which we see God. It becomes the lens through which we see ourselves. So, I mean, there's so many of them. I think of, like, here's a kid who at some point, you know, one of their parents says to them, like, hey, I'm so glad that we don't have to worry about you like we have to worry about your sister. And all of us is just this thing of like, hey, I'm glad we don't have to worry about you, like we have to worry about your sister.

But then the agreement gets made with this lie. And the lie is, oh, my value comes from not being a bother. And so then that becomes the lens through which I see the world because I made this agreement with, oh, I'm valued in as much as I'm no trouble to anyone around me. I can't tell you the number of women I've talked to who as girls love to dance and were in dance and loved this, love showing up, love dancing, love moving. And at some point though, someone pointed out that their bodies didn't look like the other dancers and so they just stopped dancing.

And that becomes, again, the agreement they made with this lie that like, oh no, you can't dance because, fill in the blank. I know I shared this in the past, but kind of along the same lines is I remember my older brother and I. At one point, we were growing, getting bigger, you know, getting stronger. One of the things that sons want to do is, as they're getting bigger and they're getting stronger, they want to pick up their moms. And it was, so my brother and I were like, yeah, we're getting strong. So we go to our mom, give her a hug and then start to pick her up. And she would like grab onto the counter and she's like, no, you can't. That's what she'd say. She'd like,

no, you can't. I'm too heavy. And at some point in the course of our lives, she had told us, she said, when she was a little girl, like not very old at all, four, five, six, somewhere in there. One of her dad's friends was over at the house and came to pick her up. And as he picked her up, he's like, whoa, you're really heavy. And she believed that and made an agreement with it in her mind. And that became a conviction of hers. That became the lens to which she saw herself. You can't pick me up.

I'm too heavy. And if this even happened to me, I mean, growing up and junior high high school, I guess I would say that, you know, one of the lies that's come against me was, I mean, I was, I guess, kind of nice, and people liked me, generally speaking, but I didn't really have any friends. So I had people who, I guess, in the course of the day, like, liked me and liked being around me, but there was that, I wouldn't get invited places, you know? And it was one of those things that was like, oh, we like you, we just don't like you

enough to invite you. And I made an agreement with that. Like, okay, so I'm tolerable. but not like choosable. What we have to do. We have to break agreements with these things because they become the lens through which we see ourselves and see the world.

I mean, someone who says to a girl like, hey, it's good thing you're pretty. Because, and then you fill in the blanks. Like, wait a second, wait, because what you're saying is, I don't have a personality. What you're saying is I'm not fun. We're saying us I'm not charming.

You're saying I'm not intelligent. I mean, I just, I think of like that notion that sometimes we just make agreements with these lies that say you're worthless or you're unimportant or you're unwanted, that you're not enough. They're not worth choosing. Again, these are lies that come against every one of us.

And at some point, something in us makes an agreement with them and says, yeah, that's true. And John Eldridge, he's an author, he says, he said like this, he said, we make an agreement with it and a conviction is formed. Make an agreement and a conviction is formed. And that conviction is, okay, well, in that case, I'm fine on my own. Again, in that case, you can't trust God. In that case, you can't really trust people.

In that case, I'm just going to be isolated. In that case, I have this fear, and that fear is I can't stop because you have to keep going. You have to keep proving yourself. You have to keep not being a bother. But St. Paul says, take every thought captive. Again, John Eldridge says, he says, make an agreement with it, and a conviction is formed.

That word conviction is the same root as the word convinced. and they come from the Latin Conventure, which means to conquer, to have victory over. So I make an agreement with this lie and the conviction is formed. I actually end up in some ways I make an agreement and it conquers me. It's one a place in my heart. And so here's what I have to do. If I'm going to say, okay, now I would begin, now I actually have a repentance, I'm going to take captive every thought.

What that means is I have to break the agreement. You have to break the agreement I've made with a lie. And it's really, really simple. It's not easy, but it's really, really simple. the name of Jesus has power because he is conquered to death whatever has conquered you or whatever has conquered me even if it's a lie that I made agreement with

that is beyond my conviction the name of Jesus has power to conquer so what I simply pray is this in the name of Jesus I renounce and then fill in the blank whatever that lies whatever the agreement has been the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I'm worthless in the name of Jesus I renounce the lie

that my value lies and not being a bother in the name of Jesus I renounce that lie of isolation or I announce that spirit of fear to realize that in order to be able to say, now I begin, I have to make a break with the agreement. That's the lie. We do that not by saying, like, that's not true. We do it by saying, in the name of Jesus, I renounce this lie.

And you guys realize that's what the apostles had to do. The truth is, they failed. The truth is, they denied, they betrayed Jesus Christ. So in the name of Jesus, they had to renounce that betrayal. In the name of Jesus, because there's a little bit of truth there, right? In the name of Jesus, I have to renounce the belief then, the conviction, the agreement that now I'm a failure and claim Jesus himself. Those Jews that Peter was preaching to in the Acts of the Apostles, that was true, the author of life you put to death. Okay, but the lie is that that means you're condemned.

As Peter says, no, no, no, you're not condemned in the name of Jesus. Renounce the lie that you're condemned and claim His grace over your life. to begin again, to be able to say, now I begin, I have to renounce the lie that dominates my life. Because this is the truth, we make agreement with those lies. We also make agreement with our sins. We also make agreement with our sins. We sometimes say, well, that's just who I am.

That's not true. No, that might be what you've done, but that's not who you are. And in order to say, now I begin, we all, we all have to renounce our sins. We actually have to turn... What I mean by that is we have to turn our backs on our sins. I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid that too many of us, even if you go to confession on a regular basis,

I'm afraid that too many of us, when we go to confession, we're not looking to renounce our sins, we're looking to soothe our consciences. Then we go to confession, I'm not trying to renounce this sin. I just want to be able to go receive Holy Communion. Now, it's good to be able to have a conscience that's sooth. It's good to be able to go to Holy Communion. It's good to be reconciled with the Lord.

but for confession to have the power that it's meant to have, I'm not just here to confess my sin and receive God's grace. I'm here to also renounce my sin. So if I bring to the Lord in confession, actions of greed, I also renounce the spirit of greed. If I bring to the Lord actions of anger, I also renounce the spirit of anger. If I bring to the Lord actions of lust,

I also renounce the spirit of lust. Whatever the sin is, I also, at some place, at some point, I have to actually renounce the sin in confession because that has power. You know, in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, here's St. Paul. He's writing to the early church in Corinth. And when he's writing to the church in Corinth, he's not writing to a bunch of church kids who discovered Jesus later on. Like they're all good kids and at some point they just heard about Jesus.

And they were like, well, this is great too. We're good. We don't have to turn away from any sins. We'll just let God's grace come into our lives. He was writing to people who had a broken past. And he even says this. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. He says, do you not know?

He says, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. He says, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, no swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. He gives us this list of kinds of sins that people, could commit. And then he makes it really personally, he says, and such were some of you, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of

the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. See, in order to say, okay, now I begin, I have to acknowledge that there are sins that have owned me. I've made an agreement with some of my sins and said, well, that's just how I am. But what St. Paul is saying, what Jesus is saying, what Peter is saying, what venerable Bruno Lanteri is saying, I have to take these thoughts captive, I have to break the agreements, whatever agreement I have made with my sin, renounce that sin,

and claim the grace of Jesus Christ. Those disciples and those early Christians, they would have thought it was game over. But it wasn't. Because of Jesus, they could break the agreement and start over. And again, again, this spirit of repentance means to change my mind. It also not the only means I break agreements with lies.

It doesn't just mean I break agreements with the sins that own me. It also means I have to break the agreements I've made that are untruths about who God is. I have to examine my beliefs about God. And this is for every single one of us. Again, if we're going to truly live this Easter and continue to move forward, I have to recognize that sometimes I look at God and seem as the enemy. Sometimes I look at God's call on my life, and I can maybe be tempted to see him as a tyrant.

Or maybe I look at God and think of him as a toy. Like maybe I look at my life and think that actually, you know what, I'm kind of fine without God. Versus the first step of repentance, realizing the truth, I am lost without God. That apart from God, I'm doomed to death. There's a lie against, once again, comes against us. That says, you don't really need God.

that God is a really nice and helpful option, but he's not essential. Sometimes we even think as Americans, we think that, you know, God's good. He takes a person from being okay to being a-okay, as opposed to God takes a person from hell to him. We need this conviction that without Jesus, I'm lost. Without Jesus, I have no hope. St. Paul wrote to the early Christians in Ephesus. He said that. He said, remember, there was a time you were without Christ.

There was a time you were without God and without hope in this world. So remember that. I have to break that agreement that says, I'd be fine without God. And when I do that, I can say, but I have God. I have Jesus. Therefore, now I begin. So here's the reality, of course, is for every one of us. We have to break the agreements.

And when I say break agreements, you might think like, this sounds kind of weird. It seems kind of like, is this really really? Catholic. It is 100% Catholic. It's not abnormal. In fact, we do this every single Easter vigil. We do this before every baptism. We're going to do it today. What will we do? Before Easter vigil, before people are baptized, before children or anyone else is baptized. At some point, they come before the priest, deacon, or bishop, and he asks them a series of questions. And he says, do you renounce the devil? Basically, do renounce sin? Do you renounce the lure of evil? Do you renounce Satan? There's this process of renunciation, breaking the agreements, and then do you believe in God

Father Mighty. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? See, this process of breaking agreements is not abnormal, it's not unusual. It is actually very common, very normal, and incredibly necessary. Because if we're going to be able to say, okay, now, it's time, now I begin. I have to break the agreements I've made with lies. I have to break the agreements I've made with the power of sin in my life. I have to break the agreement I've made with that God is either a tyrant or a toy. And this is the last thing. The last thing is just an example of this. It's a story of a young woman named Margaret. I came across so many years ago and I just,

it struck me because Margaret was just a very normal young woman. As Margaret was growing up, her dad was kind of distant from her, really distant from her. In fact, he was kind of cold, if not cruel. He didn't give her a lot of love. And so Margaret saw herself as someone who is not worth a lot of love. It happens so many. many of us. But Margaret was really beautiful. And so the attention, the affection, the love that her father didn't give to her, there were young men who were really, really quick, are really ready to give her whatever attention, whatever affection that her heart longed for. And so, you know, you think if you're not being fed, you'll eat anything. If there's no food, you eat out of a dumpster.

And that's, in some ways, that's what Margaret did. At one point, Margaret started seeing this guy. She moved in with them. They moved in together. And they lived together for, I don't know, three years. At one point, this man, he had owed a bunch of people some money in gambling debts or whatever kind of debts. And so they tracked him down. They knew he was hunting in the woods. And so they tracked him down in the woods. And they actually killed him and left his body there in the woods. When he didn't come home, Margaret was concerned, obviously, because she knew that there was some danger there. And she also knew where he'd be hunting. So she went off into the night and in the woods there she found his body. In that moment, not only was she overcome with

this grief of losing this man that she genuinely loved. But she also was overcome by this conviction. And the conviction was, he's dead and his soul is somewhere now. He was this awareness of like, okay, I know what we've been doing. Here we are outside of marriage. Here we are living together. Have I led this man to hell? He's dead now. His soul is somewhere. And what we've done in living together is a serious, serious sin. So not only wish you overrule my grief, she's overcome by this conviction, this conviction of, oh my gosh, I need God's mercy, I need God's grace, I need to pray for this man, whatever, whatever I can do. So Margaret, here she is. She goes to confession, as after the funeral gets done, she goes to confession and everything. And

and yet, you know, the lies are still there. And it took Margaret a number of years. Because those lies of like, okay, you're only, I'm not. worth loving if people will recognize your beauty. If you're only worth loving in this way or that way, you're only worth using instead of really being worth loving. But what Margaret would do is even every time she fell for the next five years, what happened with the next five years, she would go back to confession, go back to confession for the same thing,

until finally the Lord was able to break those agreements she had made with the lies. He was able to break the agreements she had made with the sins that had power over her, and he set her in this free. So she was free to begin again. Now 20 years later, now Margaret is 45 years old, and she's in prayer. and she has this vision that Jesus appears to her. This is true story.

Jesus appears to her. And in this vision, Jesus shows Margaret her place in heaven. And as she looks up and sees her place in heaven, Margaret's head falls to her chest and she begins sobbing and saying no, saying no. It's just like, no, Jesus, that's not where I belong. Because where Jesus showed where she belonged was he showed her a place among the virgins in heaven. And here's Margaret who's just crying and going, no, Jesus, you know my story. You know, not just with this one guy, you know these other men, you know my story, you know what I've done.

and that moment in this vision, Jesus takes Margaret's face in his hands and raises her eyes to his and he says to her, Margaret, you're my beloved. And I've taken your sins as far from you as the east is from the west. I've taken whatever sins were scarlet and made you as white as snow. I've transformed you. I've restored you and that's exactly where you belong. Now, the story here, the story is not just about the sin against purity or that the, the, virginity is like the highest and holiest thing.

That's not what we're saying here. What we're talking about is the power of God's grace to be able to give us the ability to say now I begin, to be able to say no matter what I've done, if I break the agreements with those lies, if I break the agreements with the agreements with God's role in my life as a tyrant or as a toy, then I am free to actually begin. Because that's the truth. Confession doesn't merely, quote unquote, merely forgive our sins. It puts an end to the power of sin.

It breaks the agreements we have made with lies. in God's mercy, it breaks the agreements we've made with sin, it breaks agreements which we've made we've made with the untruth that God is our enemy or that God is optional. And it allows us, actually allows Jesus, to take every thought captive so that we can truly change our minds, so that we can truly change our lives so that with Jesus, we can truly repent so that now we can say, now I begin, in order to be able to do this now. We are going to renew our baptismal promises. We're actually going to renounce the sins that have come against us. We're going to claim Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and God,

the Father, as our Father. And so I invite us all to stand as we renounce sin and claim the truth of God's mercy, claim the truth of God's love for us. And if you do in fact believe this, If you do not to have to act to want to renounce these lies, renounce these sins, renounce God's false role in our lives, I invite you to say, I do. And if you do want to claim God, I invite you to say, I do. And so I ask you, do you renounce sin so as to live in the freedom of the children of God? I do. Do you renounce the lure of evil so that sin may have no mastery over you?

I do. Do you renounce Satan, the author and prince of sin? I do. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty Creator of heaven and earth? I do you believe in Jesus Christ His only son our Lord who was born of the Virgin Mary suffered death and was buried

rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father I do you believe in the Holy Spirit the Holy Catholic Church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body and life everlasting

and may Almighty God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has given us new birth by water and the Holy Spirit and bestowed on us the forgiveness of sins keep us by His grace in Christ Jesus our Lord for eternal life. Amen.