Consummation: the state of being consummated, completion, fulfillment. St. Paul is writing about the consummation of God's plan for the universe. We are privileged, by revelation, to know what this plan is, how the future of the creation will see its fulfillment in Christ. At the moment the universe is not finished, it is not completed. It is a work in progress. That is why there is so much mess in human history. We are a world under construction. But one day creation will be completed. History is neither meaningless nor purposeless. It is moving toward a glorious goal. One day in the future all the universe will acknowledge the reality that is Christ. At present there is discord, dissension, and danger in the universe, but in the fullness of time all will be resolved, harmony will be restored, and the peace we all long for will come into being through Christ. There will be cosmic renewal and universal regeneration.

Marcus Aurelius wrote about our place in relationship to the universe. "He who does not know what the world is does not know where he is, and he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is." How would you respond to such challenge? Do you know what the world is, and for what purpose it exists? According to Marcus Aurelius you need to know it in order to know where you are, and who you are.

Today the study of metaphysical cosmology - that branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the structure of the universe and our relationship to it - is subject to contentious debate. Atheists do not believe in a divine origin of the universe nor the presence of God in its continuing development. They do not believe that God the Son sustains all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3), that "by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... all things were created by him and for him." (Colossians 1:16) They do not believe that there is but "one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live" (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Gore Vidal, author and commentator, who died on July 31, 2012 wrote, "there is no cosmic point to the life that each one of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge...there is nothing else. No thing. This is it." No wonder people turn to hedonism - eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die - and live senseless lives. Materialists, or naturalists, by their premise that there is nothing more to this life than matter, that there is no spirit, cannot accept that there is any purpose to life. To them, if something cannot be quantified, it doesn't exist. So all that is subjective about our experience - our mental life and consciousness, our values, and our relationships, love and beauty - is an illusion to them.

Materialists cannot account for everything in life. "Materialists are in the business of banishing astonishment; they want to demystify the world and human beings along with it, to show that everything we see as a mystery is reducible to components that aren't mysterious at all. And they cling to this ambition even in cases where doing so is obviously fruitless. Neo-Darwinism insists that every phenomenon, every species, every trait of every species, is the consequence of random chance, as natural selection requires... You can't explain consciousness in evolutionary terms." (Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard, March 25, 2013) The materialist believes that all scientific knowledge of the universe is in principle reducible to the laws of physics. All human beings are but molecules in motion. But this is not how we or they live. Nobody thinks that their loved ones are merely molecules in motion and nothing but matter. Materialists don't live according to their beliefs, seeing their friends and family as genetically determined robots. If they did they would be psychopaths. Atheism and materialism doesn't work. It is absurd to believe that there is no purpose or plan to life. We don't live that way. We plan. We are motivated by purposes. Why then do they reject the plan of God for life, for the universe? They don't want to deal with the divine. They don't want to admit that they might be accountable to their Maker. They want to be liberated from a higher authority.

Contrast this way of thinking with the letter to the Ephesians. There is a grand purpose of God in the universe. It is the establishment of a new order, a new creation, of which Christ shall be the acknowledged head. Everything in heaven and earth will one day be summed up (consummated) in Christ. The entire harmony of the universe shall find its center and bond of union in Christ. Redemption includes the whole created order. Now there are alien and discordant elements which have to be subdued. "The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:21,22) There is One alone who can and will bring to completion and unify all things. It is a fallacy that we can divide the material from the spiritual, the physical from the mental, the sacred and the secular, the natural from the supernatural. Christ is in all things, and all things will find their true meaning and purpose, their true place and harmony in him. The more we realize that this is going to happen, that this plan is being fulfilled, the more we will want to be part of that plan, part of finding our meaning and purpose, our true place and harmony in Christ. We will want to become a follower, a disciple of Christ. We will be on our way of knowing where we are and who we are, and who we are becoming.

How would you prefer to respond to Marcus Aurelius's challenge? With the skepticism of the atheistic materialist? Or with the perspective that Paul reveals? God has let us know the secret of his plan. He tells us about God's plan for us before the foundation of the world and then in the consummation of all things: "to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment." If Paul could expand his mind to grasp these things, how much more, with all our knowledge should we. Yet, in our secular age our minds seem to have shrunk, and our horizons have narrowed. We have reduced life to its molecular components and become preoccupied with our own petty little affairs. We need to see life in the light of the eternity of God's plans. Than we would look up in worship and praise for the blessing of knowing that we are going somewhere to someone who created us in love and redeemed us.

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