Can these dry bones live?

For the last few weeks I’ve had Ezekiel 37 stuck in my head:

[The Lord] set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” – Ezekiel 37:1-3

The Lord then tells Ezekiel to speak to the dry bones and say:

“I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life…” – Ezekiel 37:5-6

We are then told that “there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them”. The Lord then commands Ezekiel to speak again, saying:

“Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live” – Ezekiel 37:9

Breath enters them, they come to life, “a vast army”…

Israel

In the subsequent verses, Ezekiel receives the interpretation of the vision. He is told that the dry bones are the Children of Israel and that God is promising to restore them to the fullness of life and bring them home from exile.

The Church

In this passage I see a spiritual meaning concerning every generation of the Church. The Body of Christ requires constant renewal and there is a continued need to call upon the Spirit to restore her members to life once again.

So often in my times of personal prayer I catch a glimpse of a world that could be, of what the world would look like if every single Catholic on the planet tried to live out the Faith to the best of his or her ability. That’s an army of 1.18 billion souls…

Maeve, the Verbum Dei Sister, who was instrumental in the renewal of my faith in my early twenties, regularly described the Church as “a sleeping giant”. It’s time to wake it up.

“Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” – Ephesians 5:14