Thank you for joining us here at Resurrection Parish (whether here in person at our Holy Name worship site, or online via our live-stream). This weekend we are finishing up our very short, 3-week message series “The Life of St. Paul.” As we mentioned at the start of this series, we really should have renamed the series, “St. Paul and the Romans,” because we have been focusing on his Letter to the Romans, from which the second reading at Mass has been coming from for the past few weeks.
St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, had not yet visited Rome – the center of the Gentile world. Yet despite this, Christianity had already sunk roots in Rome. St. Paul’s letter was one of introducing himself to the Christians in Rome, and inviting them to join him in his ministry of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in Rome. There was, however, a pastoral reason for St. Paul to visit Rome. Word had reached St. Paul that there was rivalry and division in the Roman Church. Some of the Christians there were of Jewish origin, and they were making the point that THEY were the Chosen People of God, and treated the Christians of Gentile origin as if they were second-class Christians. Some of the Gentile Christians pushed back against this by pointing out that most of the Jewish People were still rejecting Christ Jesus, whereas Christ was being excepted by an ever growing number of Gentiles. They argued that God had rejected the Jews, and that the Gentiles were the new Chosen People of God.
Two weeks ago, St. Paul address this division. The bottomline is that we are all – Jews and Gentiles – sinners. We have all been disobedient to God, yet in His great love God has shown His mercy to all. Therefore we were all God’s cherished children.
Last week we addressed St. Paul’s rhetorical questions, “Who has known the mind of God?” We noted that while we understand in our heads that no one has known the mind of God, often it takes longer for our hearts to accept that and behave accordingly. We have all at times acted as if we have known the mind of God, or worse, to think we knew better than God. The virtue of humility is needed to keep us grounded in the reality that God is Msytery.
Yet despite being a mystery, God has chosen to reveal Himself to us; first through the Sacred Scriptures, most completely through His only-begotten son, Jesus Christ, but still through our prayers. The challenge is figuring out when and what God is revealing to us, and how we can know that it is God and not our own pride. We reviewed the main steps of what the Church calls the discernment of spirits which is a proven way of understanding God’s will in our lives.
In this weekend’s second reading, St. Paul makes a slight shift from being more theological, to being more pastoral. After explaining what God has revealed to us through His Son, Jesus, now St. Paul focuses more on how we are called to live as a “new creation.” For St. Paul, becoming a Christian was a literal rebirth. The Christian’s entire life must now be lived for God. St. Paul’s vision of Christian living highlights three characteristics.
First, Christian living is incarnational. This is why St. Paul is urging the Christians in Rome, and all Christians, “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1). More specifically, Paul encourages temperance, chastity, and other types of bodily self-control under this appeal. These represent ways that disciples can “put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13) and “glorify God” with their bodies (1 Cor 6:20). Paul is not reducing sacrifice to a mere symbol of how Christians conduct themselves in a spiritual way. Sacrifice is an outward action that engages the whole person, body and soul.
Next, St. Paul envisions Christian living as being liturgical. The responsibilities of Christian worship cannot be confined to just the hour or so of Sunday Mass. The Christian’s personal devotion and morality are intimately connected to divine worship. When Jesus was crucified on the Cross, He radically transformed the nature of sacrifice by being both priest and victim. The Christian is challenged to conform their lives to that of Christ by offering their trials and sufferings in the body as a holy oblation to the Lord.
Finally, Christian living is ecclesial. “Paul pleads with the Romans to offer their “bodies” (plural) as a “sacrifice” (singular). This detail suggests he envisions not a series of unconnected, individual acts but a collective effort of the Christian community to glorify the Lord in union with one another. Paul does not privatize our service to God in the body. Instead, he calls for a sacrificial, communal commitment from the Church” (Hahn, S. W. (2017). Romans. [P. S. Williamson & M. Healy, Eds.], p. 213, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A division of Baker Publishing Group).
St. Paul urges us “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2). This is particularly challenging, because everyone ordinarily want to fit in and be accepted by people. We are all susceptible to peer pressure. Yet St. Paul points out that conformity with the world, which frequently sets itself in opposition to God, can lead to moral and spiritual corruption. Eschatology is the theology of the four last things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. For St. Paul “this age” referred to the age dominated by sin, suffering, and strife – all due to our self-centeredness. “The age to come,” the second age, refers to the age of messianic fulfillment. St. Paul saw Christians living in an overlap of these two ages, the transitional time when the “present evil age” (Gal 1:4) continues alongside the messianic age of grace. The Kingdom of God is “already” and “not yet” at the same time. The Christian journey is one of transformation, whereby we cast off the things of “this age” – namely our sins and vices – and become “new creations” in the “age to come” by building up our life of grace, virtues, and service. From “self-centeredness” to “other-centeredness” with “other” being first God and then our neighbor.
The task for this week is to identify one thing in your life that you still need to transform more according to the mind of God. Then bring it to God in your prayer this week, asking for the grace to discern His will and the grace to do it.