In today’s second reading from Romans, Paul tells us that we must think of ourselves as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.
What does that mean?
Well, I actually decided to look to see what God calls us not to do to understand what he wants us to do. The strongest word in the Old Testament that tells us what not to do is abomination. Anything that is an abomination to God is what we should not do. Looking in the Old Testament to see what is an abomination, I found that the most common use of the word is in connection to idolatry.
The worst sin in the Old Testament is idolatry. Every form of idolatry eventually leads the Jews away from God and even into pagan practices including human sacrifice.
If we are to live in a way that rejects sin and seeks righteousness, the most powerful form of it is in finding and eliminating idolatry from our lives. Any form of idolatry will lead us away from Christ.
The cause of idolatry was always what makes me prosperous. Even in societies that never encountered the God of the Jews until 1500’s they too had similar pagan practices including human sacrifice and even child sacrifice and such practices were to please the gods to ensure prosperity of one form or another.
Such idolatry was an attempt to manipulate the gods to conform to our will or to placate the gods who might be mad at us for one reason or another.
Jesus calls us completely out of this system and he offers himself as sacrifice so that we will be freed from all that.
Then, as we see in Paul, our role is to serve God in such a way that we are not pleasing him so that he will make us prosperous, but we will live for him as His agents and glorify him in our lives. At times that might make us prosperous, but at times it might make us poor. Jesus never promises financial prosperity. He rather promises eternal joy and calls us to be agents to lead others to that joy.
This means we need to allow ourselves to be formed as those agents. We need the Holy Spirit to come to challenge and change us so that we will live in a way that will reflect our love for God and for God’s presence in the world.
We cannot live for prosperity and we cannot make prosperity our focus, we must instead live for holiness and make holiness our desire.
If we live for Christ we must live for righteousness, but the truly righteous one among the Jews was the prophet. He was the one who lived in a way that let people know that God was intimately involved in the human lives of the Jews and later the whole world. The perceived righteous one was the pharisee he conformed to the norms that would most benefit him.
So if we are to live as St. Paul calls us we must live in true righteousness, the righteousness of the prophet, not of the pharisee. We need the Holy Spirit to come to challenge and change us to be those prophets.
I think you will find that we are living in a unique time where that call is even stronger.
Our country is caught up in a revolution right now and we are seeing people challenge the status quo in every aspect of some cities.
We see the work to take down statues. Does any of this challenge our form of thinking? People are afraid that these revolutionaries will take down statues of Jesus because they represent the status quo to some people.
I am certainly not inviting you to participate in any of this, but I am calling us all to ask the Lord to show us where we have embraced the status quo. Look for anytime we made property more important than people and we will see what needs to change in us.
How can we as Catholics live for righteousness at this time? Can we live this way, if it becomes unpopular to come to church and live the faith?
Can we pray to be challenged on what God wants us to do?
Can we ask the Lord to show us what needs to be done?
We need to draw on the devotions and piety we foster as Catholics, we need to stay close to the sacraments if we can, so that we can live in ways that pleases Christ in our love and service to others, even if it does not conform to society.
Remember going to Church is a powerful act whether you are attending in person or attending online. It is a powerful act for each of us to live.
We must allow ourselves to be challenged by Christ so that we can be his agents in the world. We must not be influenced by what is expedient or culturally acceptable. We must live in ways that lead others to know Christ in us to see Christ in what we do. That may not conform to society’s norms.
What happens when we do not. I learned some time ago when I watched people protest against the Catholic Church and insult and scream at innocent Catholics attending Mass on Sunday, when the local media was trying to mold the Church in their image and fostering movements that called people to fight for their world there way, that this was the source of evil: in and out of the Church. Our world, our way.
We represent our world, God’s way. But our understanding of God’s way is challenged and must be challenged every day. We must allow God to show us where the status quo is not God’s way and where we need to understand our perception of righteousness to be God’s way.
We are agents of God’s love, justice, mercy, holiness so that people can see that their world their way will fail but the only way to a just society is one that is rooted in the eternal truths of love, mercy, justice and holiness in Christ. That is a society where all try to live in righteousness in service to others.
Let us call the Holy Spirit to come to challenge and change us that God’s will may enlighten our minds and we may enlighten others by our actions.
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