THE CHRISTIAN VOCATION TO LIFE IN THE SPIRIT


WEDNESDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Gal 5:18-25; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 11:42-46

Living by the Spirit of Wisdom and Love

We have understood the impossibility of a human person fulfilling the Commandments of God as coming from the fact that our human nature was turned away from God by the original sin of Adam and Eve. The Commandments cannot save man without the Spirit to regenerate the fallen nature. God never meant his Commandments to save man but to show man how dead he was in sin. Therefore, St. Paul explains how a Christian can live above the Law because of the Holy Spirit of adoption through our faith in Jesus Christ. “If you are led by the Spirit, no law can touch you.” The reason is that by our profession of faith and baptism into the death of Jesus Christ, we are declared dead, which is what the ritual demonstrates. Our life after baptism is in Jesus Christ and in communion with the Holy Spirit, which he sends into our hearts for adoption. The indwelling Holy Spirit reveals the will of the Father to us and enables us to live it out. The Commandments express the will of the Father. Hence, a Christian conforms to the will of God through his interior prayer and life. “What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. There can be no law against things like that, of course.” So, we can live above the Law because we draw life from our interior communion with the Holy Spirit.

The condition for a spiritual life stated above is the development of an interior life and prayer. Our faith and dominant desire for Jesus Christ make us draw life from him. For this reason, we need to heighten our desire for Jesus Christ daily in meditative prayer. This condition is necessary for our growing in holiness. The growth will never happen if our lives dwell on the external instead of the interior communion with the Holy Spirit. When we fail to pray and keep our quiet time with the Lord, the spiritual content of our hearts gradually changes to sensual content. The old man rises, and the senses become the sources of our inspiration. St. Paul called this life in the flesh. “When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things.” Recall that sin springs from inordinate desires of our will. Because the will is a spiritual faculty, desires express the flight of the will to the object of its love for which it lives. By dwelling or spending more time with creatures instead of with the Lord, we begin to draw life from other spirits connected to the objects of our desire, which preoccupies our minds and hearts. It is through this spiritual dynamic that some people end up with spirits of fornication, sorcery or witchcraft, anger and quarrel, envy and jealousy, drunkenness and wild orgies, etc., as Paul listed.

It is by the disordered desires that people keep company or befriend these various spirits, which gradually define or share their lives. Hence, there are witches, fornicators, drunkards, etc., because there are such spirits with whom people commune by their desires. People become all these because they befriend and obey these various spirits. Hence, the Psalmist talks about the blessedness of those who do not follow the counsel of the wicked. “Happy indeed is the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked; nor lingers in the way of sinners nor sits in the company of scorners, but whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders his law day and night.” We must be on our guard concerning social media. Many unwary souls gradually cultivate the company of these spirits through what they watch on social media. We must watch over our minds and hearts and consecrate them to the Lord in meditating on his word daily. Our Lord pronounced woes on the Pharisees and lawyers based on their clinging to external forms of religion while neglecting the interior aspect. “You who pay your tithe of mint and rue and all sorts of garden herbs and overlook justice and the love of God!” Justice demands that we devote our time daily to listen to our God, who saved us from damnation through the blood of his Only Begotten Son, and devote our lives to serve him in love.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to live out our baptismal profession of faith in Jesus Christ your Son, that eschewing everything that does not lead to him in our lives, we may dedicate ourselves daily to living an interior life of love inspired by the Holy Spirit.

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