Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 12:13-21
We move on now in Luke to more immediate concerns of the Christian life. Today’s topic is about the perennial question of money, or rather, the love of money. A man in the crowd said to Jesus:
Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.
According to Mosaic Law, the general rule was that an elder son received double that of a younger son. If there was a dispute, it was usually settled by a rabbi, which is presumably why the man approached Jesus. It was the kind of problem in which Jesus was not remotely interested, and he refused to get involved. One wonders how interested Jesus is when we make novenas to win lotteries or when we ask God to help us get our hands on the wealth of a rich and elderly aunt!!
Jesus now takes the opportunity to make some general remarks “against all kinds of greed”. A man may be wealthy, he says, but his possessions do not guarantee him life. Life comes with freedom, peace and happiness. Money cannot buy these things.
There is no evidence that rich people enjoy more freedom, peace or happiness, although many of us are inclined to think they do and envy them. Their marriages do not last any longer. They do not bring up better children. They do not necessarily enjoy better health.
At this point Jesus speaks a telling parable. A farmer who is already rich has a bumper harvest. It is so big that he has to pull down his existing barns to build larger ones. When all that is done, he smugly says to himself: “My boy, you have blessings in reserve for years to come. Relax! Put your feet up. Eat heartily, drink well. Enjoy yourself.” But Jesus tells them, that very night:
God said to him [i.e. the farmer], ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you’.
What happens now to all his piled-up wealth? Yes, it is all left behind. “You can’t take it with you.” “How much did he leave?” was asked about a billionaire who died. “Every cent,” was the reply. When the farmer met his God, what had he brought with him? Little or nothing. When St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) died, how much do you think she brought? One feels she brought a great deal. And she certainly left behind a great deal to enrich the lives of many.
What is my attitude to money and wealth? If I were to die now, what could I bring with me to present to God? And what will I leave behind, apart from cash and possessions? All of us can be rich in God’s sight, and it does not require any money. Someone has said that the really rich are not those who have the most, but those whose needs are the least (see Luke 12:22-34, where Jesus spells out a recipe for a life free from anxiety—the life which he himself lived).
And what we need most is the ability to reach out in love, the love that builds and makes life better for others. Think of what good parents leave behind in children whose lives are dedicated to making this world a better place—or teachers who have helped young people to devote themselves to service of the community. What we need is to live in communities where people look after each other. That would be a situation where, because everyone gives, everyone gets.
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Friday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 12:54-59
Today we have two inter-related pieces of advice from Jesus. It is striking how simple and down to earth are the examples which Jesus uses to illustrate his teaching.
Here he takes the common phenomenon of the farmer reading the sky to forecast the weather. With experience, one can become very accurate, at least in the short-term, forecasting by observing the colour and shape of the clouds, the direction and strength of the wind and so on. The wind from the west came from the Mediterranean and so brought rain. The south wind blew from the desert and so brought hot weather.
First, Jesus asks his listeners, if they are so good at reading the weather signs, why are they not equally good at reading the signs that are taking place before their very eyes:
You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
They were now in the messianic age. Jesus has been performing one sign after another through the power of his teaching and the authority that he brings, through the healing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the calming of storms, the liberating of people from evil forces and so many other miraculous events.
Yet, the people do not seem to be able to see the clear hand of God in what he does. They follow him with curiosity to see what they may be able to get for themselves, but very few commit themselves to following him as disciples.
Second, he asks them:
…why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?
He urges them to solve issues here and now instead of dragging their opponents to court only to find they lose the case and end up in jail.
If that is wise advice in everyday life, how much more important to be ready when we come to face the Judge of judges? If we do not settle our affairs now, in the future it may be too late. Linking this with what has already been said, it is time for us to read the clear signs of God’s call coming through Jesus and to respond by a change of heart and behaviour (Greek, metanoia). Then, with no evidence to incriminate us, we will have nothing to fear from the Judge on that day of reckoning and accounting.
Bringing all this down to a more earthly level, we might say that in our own time, we live in an age that is litigation-crazy. In many situations, both sides often end up the losers (but not their lawyers!). The bitter aftermath can last for years.
There may be times when recourse to a court is the only way to see justice done, but very often, disputes are best worked out between the parties involved. For example, for many, the pain of marriage breakdowns can be vastly increased by litigation, and can be a source of long-lasting bitterness, especially where the arguments are over large—or even small—amounts of property.
As Christians, we need to develop a real sense of justice as shown by wanting the best for all concerned. Forgiveness and reconciliation should be a high priority for us. There should be no place in our lives for sheer vindictiveness or, perhaps worse, simply a desire to make someone suffer more cruelly than we have.
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Saturday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:1-9
Catastrophes or accidents which take people’s lives constantly force people to ask, Why? or Why them? Why did that young mother die giving birth to her child? Why did that young father die of cancer and leave behind a family struggling to survive? Why did my father die at the age of 66 while my mother lived to be 92?
Today, Jesus mentions two apparently recent incidents in which lives were lost. In one case, Pilate, the Roman governor, had some Galileans executed in the Temple precincts. It is not clear as to why; perhaps the Galileans had violated some Roman regulation about public order. In the other, eighteen people were killed when a tower in Siloam, inside the south-east section of Jerusalem’s wall, fell on top of them. There is no other record in history of either of these two events. However, the first is regarded as typical of Pilate’s administration.
The New American Bible carries the following note:
The slaughter of the Galileans by Pilate is unknown outside Luke; but from what is known about Pilate from the Jewish historian Josephus, such a slaughter would be in keeping with the character of Pilate. Josephus reports that Pilate had disrupted a religious gathering of the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim with a slaughter of the participants and that on another occasion Pilate had killed many Jews who had opposed him, when he appropriated money from the temple treasury to build an aqueduct in Jerusalem. (edited)
It seems that some people at the time were saying that this was a punishment of God on these people for moral wrongs they had done. Jesus disagrees:
Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?
Jesus asserts:
No, I tell you, unless you repent you will all perish as they did.
The sins of the victims were not the cause of their death, but they are certainly warnings to the rest of us to see if we are ready for such a certain eventuality. And Jesus goes on to illustrate his meaning with a parable:
A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the man working the vineyard, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’
The story can be linked to what Jesus has just said. In a sense, the people he has been talking to are like fig trees that have not borne fruit. The three years mentioned in the story may refer to the length of Jesus’ own ministry. However, they still have a chance to turn their lives around, a chance which was not given to those who had died in those two incidents.
We, too, are being given a chance—for a day? A month? Several years? The fact is that we have no idea. What is clear is that there is no time to waste; we have to start today. For God, the past is not what counts or the future, but only the present. As long as I am with him now, I have nothing to worry about.
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Thursday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 6:19-23
Today’s reading is an immediate continuation of yesterday’s and more or less repeats what was said then. Paul continues today with the imagery of slavery and urges the Romans to switch from one kind to another. He knows how morally weak they are, so he expresses himself in human terms which he knows are not a perfect analogy:
For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
They will become more holy, more in the image of their God and Saviour. He realises there is some difficulty using the word ‘slave’ of Christians who are essentially free in Christ. Nor is he implying that in becoming slaves of immorality, they are not responsible for the choices they make, any more than in submitting themselves totally to goodness in Christ. When they lived a life of sin, what did they really gain? All they got were experiences of which they are now deeply ashamed because, with Christ in their lives, they know that kind of sinful behaviour only brings death, spiritual death. He now switches the image somewhat.
From being enslaved to sin and liberated in Christ, he speaks of their being now liberated from sin and enslaved to the service of God. But this enslavement, which is a commitment to the good, will bring about their sanctification and will terminate in life without end (another paradox). Slavery to God produces holiness, and the end of the process is life without end. There is no eternal life without holiness. Those who have been ‘justified’ will surely give evidence of that fact by the presence of holiness in their life.
As has been said already, anyone who is truly ‘graced’ by the love of God must reveal that in the way they lead their lives. Jesus taught just that when he said that only a good tree can bear good fruit and vice versa. And again, that any branch on the Vine, which Christ is, will produce an abundance of fruit. The fruit-less branch will be cut off and thrown away.
Then in a much-quoted phrase, Paul again repeats his thesis:
…the wages of sin is death…
But of course:
…the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Two kinds of ‘slavery’ are contrasted. The slavery of sin brings death as its wage; sin creates a debt to death. The slavery in faith to Christ as Lord brings life as an unearned, unmerited gift—the gift of life without end.
To our modern way of thinking, slavery of any kind is not to be even considered. But slavery to God and goodness has totally different effects. It is only possible where there is total freedom—the freedom to be able to surrender oneself totally and unconditionally in the arms of the true, loving and beautiful God. No one is more alive than the one who gives himself or herself completely to God and makes God’s will entirely their own.
And, of course, Paul is perfectly right. The wages of sin is indeed to slide inexorably into a deteriorating quality, and ultimately loss, of life. The gift, the unearned and totally gratuitous gift that God offers us by his love leads to a life that knows no end. This is the true freedom which brings happiness and perfect peace. It is for us to make the choice: to be sin’s slave or God’s.
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Wednesday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 12:39-48
Today we have some further warnings on readiness. The unpredictability of God’s coming for the final call is compared to a thief breaking into one’s house. If one knew when the thief was coming, one would be prepared and have everything well locked up. Many people have had the experience of being burgled or of having their pocket picked. The point is that we do not know the day or the hour:
…the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Peter asks if this image is just for the disciples or for the whole world. Jesus answers by telling a parable.
A faithful and farsighted steward is one who is found doing his job for the household whenever the master returns. The ‘steward’ was one who had responsibility over the other servants, and Jesus could be referring here to his Apostles and other leaders of the Christian community. A trusted slave (‘servant’) too could sometimes be put in charge of an estate.
But if the steward feels that the master is “taking his time in coming” (i.e. delayed) and sets about abusing the rest of his staff and wasting his time in debauching himself, he will be severely punished when his master returns unexpectedly. We know that the early Christians believed that Jesus would return during their lifetime, but as time went on and there was no sign of Jesus, Christians could be tempted to become less vigilant and begin to ‘live it up’. It was a dangerous thing to do.
Then Jesus makes a distinction. Those who know their master’s wishes (like his disciples), but are found misbehaving when he returns, will be severely punished. Those who do not know (non-disciples, outsiders) will still be punished for doing wrong, but their punishment will be less severe than that of those who have received their master’s teaching and instructions:
From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
We as Christians, with the guidance of the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church, bear far greater responsibility for the wrongs we do than others, such as non-Christians or non-religious people, who have less guidance.
Within the Church, there are people who are better formed and better informed, and they too bear greater responsibility before God. At the same time, it might be worth pointing out that those who could avail themselves of such formation and information and fail to do so may be also liable to greater accountability. We need to distinguish between nescience and ignorance. Nescience is simply not knowing or not being aware of some truth or value. Ignorance is not knowing what I ought to know and have every opportunity of coming to know.
Ignorance may sometimes be bliss, but not where knowing Jesus and the Gospel is concerned. And wisdom, far from being folly, is a gift to be treasured.
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Tuesday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 5:12,15,17-21
We move on today to a different theme in this letter—the role of Jesus in our salvation from sin. A contrast is made between Adam, our ‘first parent’, and Christ. Adam brought sin and death into the world; Christ brought righteousness and life.
These two persons also sum up the message of the Letter up to this point. Adam stands for man’s condemnation and Christ for the ‘justification’ of the believer:
…just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.
That “one man”, of course, is Adam. Paul is referring to the creation story in Genesis where the Man and the Woman, clearly disobeying the instructions they had received from God, ate the fruit (which is not specified as an apple!) of the tree, significantly called the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:17).
It is significant, because it was only after they had eaten the fruit that they had, for the first time, a sense of evil, sin and guilt indicated by a newly-felt shame of their nakedness and their hiding from God.
Even if today we might not historically identify the ‘Man’ and the ‘Woman’ as actual people, they represent the whole human race. There is no doubt that through human activity sin, which is a turning away from God, came into the world and continues to flourish in all of us. Through his disobedience, Adam, who sired every human being, infected all those descended from him with sin, and hence also with death.
Sin divides man from God and this separation effectively is ‘death’, a death that is spiritual and eternal, and of which physical death is the symbol (“death reigned from Adam”). This happened either by our sharing in the sin of Adam, or else because of each one’s personal sins. None of us can claim that we have never sinned. We are born into an environment where sin can be found everywhere and in every person. It touches us from the moment we are born. And through our personal sins, we join with Adam in his rebellion against God.
However, no matter how great the sin, God’s grace is infinitely greater in nullifying the effects of Adam’s sin. God’s saving love is a free gift given to all in abundance:
For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
And Paul says:
If, because of the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Paul continues:
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
This is the key statement expressing the meaning of the whole passage. Condemnation came through the disobedience of one person, Adam, representing all of us, and it is the single act of one Man, Jesus Christ, who by his death and resurrection brought justification and life to all.
“Justification” means, as we have said, our total restoration into a life of union with God, a union which is accessed by our believing in Jesus as Lord and Saviour:
For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
For this restoration of our relationship with God, we do not have to wait until the Final Judgement. Being reborn in Christ is a process that continues from the moment we first begin to believe in Jesus as Lord:
…but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so grace might also reign through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Nothing we have ever done, and nothing we could ever do by ourselves could have undone the sin which penetrates every corner of our world and of our existence. It could only happen by the grace, the freely-given love of God, which has been poured into our hearts.
‘Grace’ is the love of God given to us spontaneously by God without our meriting it in any way. Once we allow that love to take over our lives, its power will be greater than sin. Sin and love are totally incompatible. Where there is love, there is God and where there is sin, love is absent.
It is ‘grace’ too which brings ‘saving justice’, the saving power of God which transforms our lives and is the beginning of that eternal life which Jesus our Lord wants us to share with him.
Jesus does not just ‘cover over’ our sins. He makes it possible for our hearts to be flooded with his Spirit effecting a real inner change and the possibility of replacing sin with goodness. But it is always his work and never ours alone.
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Tuesday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 12:35-38
In today’s Gospel, we have more advice from Jesus about readiness. It is an echo of the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids (Matt 25:1-13).
We are to be ready, with our belts fastened and our lamps burning, like servants waiting for the groom to return from the wedding. If we prepare in this way, when the master comes and knocks, we will be ready to admit him without delay.
There is a reward, a surprising reward, for servants thus prepared. When the master comes back and finds his servants awake and ready, he will seat them at table and himself wait on them:
Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.
Jesus had said of himself:
…just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matt 20:28)
He is the one who, as Master and Lord, washes the feet of his disciples. And if the master comes in the middle of the night or before dawn, blessed are those servants who are ready for his return.
This need for readiness is not a reason to be anxious nor a reason to be afraid. Reason and experience tells us again and again that the Lord’s call comes at the most unexpected times. The only solution is to be ready here and now and leave the future to take care of itself.
In our relationship with God, it is always the present which counts. The prepared servant lives constantly in the present and seeks and finds God there. A life so lived takes care of itself—and its future.
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Friday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 7:18-25
Paul today describes an experience which all of us have had. He senses the tendencies to wrongdoing in himself which are at variance with a desire to do what is good and right.
As Jesus said to his disciples during his Passion:
…the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
(Matt 26:41)
Paul is speaking of someone still under the empire of sin and not yet justified by Christ’s grace. In contrast, in chapter 8 of Romans, he speaks in the name of the justified Christian with the gift of the Spirit who, nevertheless, is still aware of an inward struggle while on earth. So the person who does not yet experience the justifying grace of God recognises a rift between a rational desire for the goodness proposed by the law and one’s actual performance contrary to the law.
There is a radical opposition between the two. While still under the law, one is unable to be free from the slavery of sin and the power of death. But one can only be rescued from defeat by the power of God’s grace working in oneself through Jesus Christ. A grace that comes through the act of faith made in Jesus as Lord:
For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
How often have we not had a similar experience? However, Paul is not saying that there is no goodness at all in each one of us. But the goodness we do have so often seems incapable of dealing with the urge to do what is wrong. And yet, when Paul does something that he does not really want to do, he senses that it is not his real self, but the sinful urge that lives within.
Here again, Paul is not denying his personal responsibility for what he does, rather, he is affirming it. He does something which is in conflict with his deepest self. And so, this is his constant experience—even when he desires to do nothing but good, the evil choice is always close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
There is a war going on between his inmost, rational self and his sensual, pleasure-seeking body. The rational self is the one which dearly loves God’s law. That law is imprinted on our minds—we all have an innate hunger for truth and goodness. The sensual, pleasure-seeking self wants to by-pass the law of truth and goodness, and tries to convince the self that in pleasure and sensuality there is goodness. Though in reality, we never choose anything except under some guise of goodness or attractiveness, however distorted.
In this terrible impasse, Paul cries out for help:
Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
He knows that by himself there is nothing he can do. But he knows where the answer is:
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
That is where his delivery is to be found. On Paul’s view of the relationship of the human body with Christ the Jerusalem Bible makes the following comment:
“Paul is concerned with the body and its component members, that is to say with the human being as he actually is, a sentient creature, with a sexual life, because it is in the body that man lives morally and religiously. The body, though tyrannised by the ‘flesh’, by death, and therefore a ‘body of flesh’, a ‘body of sin’, and ‘a body of death’, is not however doomed to perish, as Greek philosophy would have it, but in accordance with the biblical tradition, destined to live, through resurrection. The principle of this renewal is the Spirit, which takes the place of the psyche, and transforms the body of the Christian into the likeness of the risen body of Christ. Until this ultimate deliverance takes place, the body of the Christian, provisionally delivered from the ‘flesh’ by its union with Christ’s death, is even now the home of the Holy Spirit, who produces in it a new life of righteousness and holiness, which is meritorious, and gives glory to God.”
And Paul concludes:
So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.
On our own, we can never win this war. But with Christ’s help, which can come directly, but also in a very special way through the support of a Christ-centred community, I can grow in freedom and overcome these irrational and destructive instincts. In their place, the values of the gospel become more and more a reality in my daily living. In the end, I may be able to say with Paul,
…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
(Gal 2:20)
That is the meaning and the goal of our being baptised into Christ.
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Saturday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 8:1-11
Paul continues to discuss the conflicting forces that we find in ourselves—that of the “flesh” and that of the Spirit of Jesus Christ:
…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
Those who are truly in Christ Jesus, not just nominally by saying so, but in a way that influences their behaviour, can never be under condemnation. The law of Christ’s Spirit is life-giving. When one lives under the “law of sin and death”, one is living under a system that sees sin everywhere, that focuses on punishment for every violation, irrespective of motive. Paul says:
…what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us…
All the Law could do was to demand external observance of its stipulations. This was not life-giving; in fact, it could have the opposite effect. It could not be an inward source of salvation and wholeness. The Law was powerless because it depended solely on one’s own efforts to observe it. As we can see in the case of the Pharisee, it could lead to a superficial and external ‘holiness’ which only concealed the corrupt influences of the flesh actively at work. Jesus spoke cuttingly of “whitewashed tombs”—bright and clean on the outside and full of corruption within.
Christ the Son of God, however, was sent by the Father and took on exactly the same human nature as every sinner so that he might, as one of us, sacrifice himself in love for us and thus remove the sin and alienation from our human nature. God became Man that man might share in the divine life. That is what we mean by calling Jesus the Mediator, the Pontifex (Latin, meaning ‘bridge-builder’); he linked together what had become broken by the sin of Adam. Man, formerly carnal, is now, through union with Christ, spiritual, sharing in the Spirit of Christ.
Now, in Christ, we can fulfil the Law’s requirements by walking:
…not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
God’s aim in sending his Son was that believers might be enabled to embody the true and full intentions of the law. And, in Christ, the Law can be summed up in one single sentence:
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
(John 13:34; see also Gal 5:14)
In keeping that commandment, everything else is taken care of. Note that God is not mentioned in this commandment, but that is the point; the only way I can effectively love God is by loving him in and through those around me.
People then can be divided into two kinds: those who live according to the ‘flesh’ and those who live according to the Spirit:
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Those who live according to the instincts of sinful human nature look forward to nothing but death. This is a disordered human nature opposed to God, because it does not and cannot submit to God’s law, and so can never please God. But those who are in the Spirit can look forward to life and peace.
The Roman Christians, however, are not living by their natural inclinations, but in the Spirit, who has made his home in them. Paul says:
Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Even the body of a Christian is subject to physical death, seen as the consequence of sin (death came with the sin in the Garden, just as life comes from him who rose to life in a garden—see John 19:41 and 20:8-9,15). But because of being ‘justified’ (made ‘righteous’) by the grace that comes from faith in Christ, the Christian’s spirit is alive with an unending life. The body is doomed to physical death and can be the instrument of spiritual death also, but the Spirit is life, a power of resurrection.
Paul concludes:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
The final resurrection of the Christian, spirit and body, is intimately dependent on that of Christ.
It is by the same power and the same gift of the Spirit, that the Father will raise them to life in their turn. This operation is already being prepared: a new life is making the Christians into sons in the likeness of the Son himself, and they are being incorporated into the risen Christ by faith and baptism. It is important to note that the word “flesh” in this passage means much more than the body. The body in itself is not bad, as some philosophers in Paul’s time maintained. For us, the body has been sanctified by the Incarnation, when God’s Son took on a human body and redeemed us through it.
‘Flesh’ also refers to what we might call today our ‘lower instincts’, the tendency, sometimes seemingly irresistible, which we have to follow urges which are selfish and self-centred, which want to satisfy our appetites, be they for food, for sex, for possessions, for anger, revenge, jealousy or violence. Left to ourselves we are likely to follow these instincts, often mistakenly thinking that our happiness lies there. But total indulgence in any or all of these leads only to personal degradation and self-destruction.
All that Paul says we can verify by our own experience. When we let our lower instincts guide us we know that, although there may be temporary pleasure and satisfaction, they are dragging us down—spoiling both our inner peace and the quality of our relationship with others, not to mention distancing us from God. It is difficult, if not impossible, to lead that kind of life and be people of prayer. On the other hand, when we—however patchily we do so—really try to live out the gospel spirit in our relationships with ourselves, with others and with God, we know that we experience a deep-down satisfaction which increases our sense of freedom and peace.
The chances are that most of us are not altogether in the flesh or altogether in the Spirit, but somewhere in between. Some are more in the flesh and give the odd salute to the Spirit, e.g. by doing the absolute minimum that their ‘religious obligations’ require. Others are trying to live fully in the Spirit, but know that from time to time, the flesh asserts itself. That is no great harm. It helps us to realise that we do not make much progress without God’s help:
…because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
But if we keep at it, that is, if we keep ourselves open to the influence of the Spirit, we will experience that the power of the Spirit does become dominant and living in the Spirit becomes easier and the seductions of the flesh become easier to resist. To do this, though, we do need to keep in contact with the ways in which the Spirit comes to us, e.g. through our participation in the life of the Christian community, its prayer life, its evangelising life, its sharing of its resources with those in need, its sacramental life and its constant listening to the Word. These are the essential channels by which the Spirit flows into our hearts and help us to live in Christ.
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Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 4:20-25
Paul continues to give the example of Abraham’s faith as a model for all of us. One might wonder why he devotes so much space to Abraham, but we must remember that he was seen as the father of God’s people (including us), and that he was looked up to as a model of good behaviour, which won God’s favour:
No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
Through his faith Abraham gave glory to God because all that happens in his life is clearly the work of God and not of a human person. Faith truly is all-powerful; it shares in the power of God himself.
When the father of the epileptic boy came to Jesus to heal his son, Jesus told him:
All things can be done for the one who believes. (Mark 9:23)
Paul, too, could boast of his weaknesses because, as he said:
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
(Phil 4:13)
And so, from today’s reading, this was the faith that:
…was reckoned to him as righteousness.
This kind of faith is the sign of real ‘uprightness’, real goodness. It is not the self-generated ‘goodness’ which is no real goodness at all. As Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper:
…apart from me, you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
It was this surrendering of himself, against all apparent reason, into God’s hands which was Abraham’s “justice”, that is, his being made right with God. This is not a moral rightness, but a total harmony of relationships, a union of heart and mind. And the word ‘reckoned’ in Scripture applies not only to him; it is there for our sake too—our faith, too, will be ‘reckoned’.
What is true of Abraham is true for every single person. Our genuine goodness will be measured by the level of our faith and trust in the God who gives us strength. And, as Abraham was made right with God because he believed in a God who brought life from the dead, so we will be justified because:
It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
This is the source of our “justification”, our being ‘made right’ with God—namely, that we totally give ourselves to Jesus Christ, as Lord and Saviour, who died and was raised to life so that we might share that life with him. In our case we go to God in faith through our intimate following of Jesus, joining him in suffering, death and resurrection.
God may seem at times to be calling us to the impossible. But our faith helps us to see that God works in everything and through everything. Apart from Abraham, there are many other examples in the lives of Christians, especially some of the great saints. Let us follow in their footsteps.
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