BECOMING COWORKERS WITH GOD


WEDNESDAY, TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

1 Cor 3:1-9; Ps 33:12-15,20-21; Lk 4:38-44

We are fellow Workers with God

In yesterday’s reflection, we concluded from the scripture that the spirit of a man knows him deeply, for it sounds his depths. The same thing applies in the case of God; the Spirit of God reaches the depths of God. But while God and his Holy Spirit are self-existing, man’s spirit is generated and sustained in being by the Holy Spirit. When disconnected from the Holy Spirit, the human spirit dies, leaving our innermost part in total darkness. The spirit of a Christian must continuously unite with the Holy Spirit to draw life from him. We refer to this as being in a state of grace. This union or communion is not and must not be kept dormant or inactive. It is a participation in which we receive spiritual life from the Holy Spirit and actively live the divine life. Just as a flame results from the interactivity of fire or heat and wood, the flame goes out when the heat is lost; our spiritual life goes out when the Holy Spirit is not in communion with us. We interact with the Holy Spirit by offering our minds and hearts to the word of God that sustains the flame of love, indicating the presence of the Holy Spirit. The heavenly flame can only be sustained by a spiritual thought that the word of God supplies in abundance as fuel for the flame. Constantly feeding the flame with heavenly fuel transforms our minds and hearts gradually into the mind and heart of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The better our minds and hearts approximate the mind and heart of Jesus Christ, the better instruments we become in the hand of God, who moves us through the Holy Spirit. This is why the Lord has consistently emphasized the need to listen or read, meditate, and contemplate the word of God daily. These activities inflame our hearts with love for God and propel us to deep prayer, the profession of faith in God, and preaching the Gospel in words and deeds. On the other hand, to feed the mind with worldly things without converting them to spiritual fuel through the word of God dampens the spiritual fire or flame. To be able to use everything to work with the Holy Spirit for the proclamation of the Gospel, we must direct everything to the love of Jesus Christ. St. Paul called the Corinthians infants due to their inability to put Christ the Lord first in their consideration. “Brothers, I myself was unable to speak to you as people of the Spirit: I treated you as sensual men, still infants in Christ. What I fed you with was milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it; and indeed, you are still not ready for it since you are still unspiritual.” The reason for calling them unspiritual people is because of the jealousy and wrangling among them about who belongs to Paul and Apollos. Their interest was not in Jesus Christ but in the apostles, who were mere men.

Our hearts must be connected directly to the Lord Jesus Christ through the love the Holy Spirit pours into us. Without this bond of love between us and Jesus Christ, it will be hard to work with Jesus Christ. Without the love of God, another spirit would work with us, not the Holy Spirit. Through inordinate love for created things, evil spirits connect and work with us. Because of this, the proclamation of the Gospel will necessarily involve putting away false spirits in people’s hearts and lives as narrated in the Gospel. “At sunset all those who had friends suffering from diseases of one kind or another brought them to him, and laying his hands on each he cured them. Devils too came out of many people, howling, ‘You are the Son of God.’” Just as spiritual illness or death results from not eating the right spiritual food, bodily sickness results from an unbalanced diet, which makes the body powered by the soul unable to repair the body. In the Gospel, Jesus Christ cured both bodily and spiritual illnesses. The word of God brings both physical and spiritual well-being to us. Our familiarity with the word of God makes us coworkers with God, for through his word, God plants his life in us. Jesus teaches us by his quiet contemplation of his Father’s presence.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to grow familiar with your word, that we may consistently feed our minds and hearts with your heavenly food, so that we may grow in our communion in your life and love through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

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