Much of the New Testament was written by St. Paul. As he went from town to town preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ he would stay a while to establish a local Christian community -- a local church. Then he would move on to another town to do the same, but he kept in touch with the churches that he established by sending some of his companions to visit them, occasionally he would go back to visit them, but most of the time he kept in touch with them through letters. Over time, 13 of these letters were discerned by the Church to be Divinely inspired, and are now part of the New Testament. Most of his letters were to encourage the local church community he established, and to address specific concerns or problems that they were facing.
Today’s Second Reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, is different. It is his longest letter, and is unique because it is the only letter that St. Paul wrote to a Christian community that he had not started. Christianity had taken root in the city of Rome before St Paul ever travelled there, but he longed to go there, since it was the capital of the great Empire.
And so he wrote the Letter to the Romans as a way of introducing himself and his teaching to that much-respected Christian community. As a result, it is the most theologically organized of all his letters. Romans is a clear and detailed presentation of St Paul's Christian wisdom and vision. The passage we have just listened to touches on one of Paul's favorite themes: the dynamics of spiritual warfare. The better we understand this theme, the better we will understand our own struggles as Christians, and simply as human beings.
St Paul began his Letter to the Romans with a detailed discussion about our need for salvation, and the role played by faith in receiving that salvation. In Chapter 8, from which today's Reading is taken, he begins to focus on the experience of someone who is already living that life of faith.
By faith we receive God's grace, and God sends us his Holy Spirit, which makes us children of God, new creatures in Jesus Christ - in other words, Christians. As a result, we feel within us the power of that grace, the attraction of living a Christ-like life, full of courage, wisdom, kindness, joy, and self-sacrifice. This impulse to follow Christ and to reflect his goodness in our own lives is the action of God's Holy Spirit within us. As St Paul says, we are "in the spirit," we belong to Christ because we "have the Spirit of Christ," and this Spirit "dwells" in us.
Life in the Spirit - this is one of St Paul's common phrases for summarizing the Christian way of life. In merely natural terms, we can recognize people who are members of the same family because we see similarities in looks, mannerisms, and habits. Just so, St Paul is saying, everyone should be able to recognize the Christian, because they see growing within us the same humility, fortitude, love, and wisdom evident in Christ.
This is the positive force in our Christian life. Like an acorn planted in good soil, our Christian identity was planted in our souls at baptism. The acorn slowly but forcefully grows into a mighty oak tree, irresistibly impelled by its own inner nature. In the same way, each one of us feels God's grace at work deep within us, impelling us towards Christian maturity, which is nothing less than holiness.
Yet, we all know that merely being a Christian doesn't create heaven on earth. We all believe in Christ; we have been baptized and confirmed; we feed on the Eucharist and are forgiven and strengthened by the sacrament of Confession. But even with all these spiritual benefits, every single day we all experience the strong pull of selfishness, laziness, lust, greed, discouragement, and all the other temptations that belong to the world of sin and death. The life of the Spirit is active in our souls, in the very depth of our souls, but this other force is at work as well. Our fallen human nature weighs us down and resists the tug of the Spirit. There are weeds growing next to that acorn, trying to steal its nutrients.
This resistance to God's grace in our life, due to our fallen human nature, is what St Paul refers to as "the flesh." When we give in to this downward pull, we turn away from life in the Spirit and give ourselves over to life in the flesh.
This is one of St Paul's most misunderstood terms. When Paul writes about our "bodies" and "the flesh," it is his way of referring to this sinful, selfish tendency that we all carry around with us. He is not saying that our bodies are evil, or that the natural pleasures that we experience in our bodies are evil. How could they be evil, when they were created by God?
Rather, he is pointing out that because of original sin, we all have within us a tendency to overindulge in those pleasures. We all have an inclination towards selfishness that resists the action of God's Spirit within us. When we let ourselves follow that inclination, we "live according to the flesh." And of course, the devil and the sinful patterns of behavior all around us are constantly trying to convince us to do just that.
It is life in the Spirit, not life in the flesh that will lead us to a deeper communion with God, which is the source of true, lasting happiness. So, St Paul encourages us and all Christians to prefer life in the Spirit and leave behind life in the flesh: "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."
We who are Christians have two possible roads to follow at every moment of our lives: the flesh or the Spirit, the self-centered road or the Christ-centered road, the road of "me first" or the road of "God's will first," the road of self-indulgence and self-glorification, or the road of self-giving generosity to God and neighbor. Our fallen nature pulls us towards the easy, self-centered path. But at the same time God's own Spirit is always at work deep within us, encouraging us to follow the narrow and steep road of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It's up to each one of us to choose which road to follow. When the tug of laziness, egged on by the devil, pulls us away from our duties and responsibilities, we are free to give in or resist. When the tug of arrogance incites us to criticize and wound those around us, we are free to give in or resist. When God's grace and the tug of the Spirit inspire us to forgive and begin again, we are free to give in or resist. When the tug of the Spirit inspires us to take a little bit of time out of our busy schedules to pray, to be with our Lord and Savior, to read his Holy Scriptures, we are free to give in or resist.
This is spiritual warfare. This is where the drama of salvation is played out every single day, in each one of our lives, as the Spirit and the flesh battle for our allegiance.
Today, as Christ once again strengthens in our hearts the life of the Spirit by feeding us with the Holy Eucharist, let's renew our trust and faith in him, and ask him to help us fight for his Kingdom by courageously living, this week and every week, the life of the Spirit.