JESUS CHRIST AS OUR ROOT IN GOD


TUESDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 

Col 2:6-15; Ps 145:1-2,8-11; Lk 6:12-19

Rooting our Lives in Christ

What we love and desire forms the root of our lives, for love makes what is loved to dwell in the heart of the lover. When the thing loved is not present or united to the lover, love takes the form of desire, the emotion or flight of the heart towards its object of love. Love is a spiritual activity, for it involves our minds and hearts, which are spiritual faculties. As we noted previously, the life of our spirits is God, and our spiritual gate or door opens directly to God. But the evil one gains entrance to our souls through the window or lattice which disordered desire opens in our souls. By his subtle temptation, he distracts the soul from focusing on God, its spiritual origin, and directs it to self and creatures. Riding on the disordered desires of the soul, he gains entrance to our souls and fills them with darkness and evil desires. Hence, instead of streams of light coming from the throne of God deep within our spirits, we have thick darkness flowing from self, enthroned as a vassal of the evil one. In this state, our souls are enslaved in darkness and sin to the evil one and the father of lies. Deliverance is possible only through dissatisfaction with ourselves in our sinful/evil condition and turning to God in faith to acknowledge and confess our sins. Since the occupation of our souls depends on the object of our love, to hate what we have become without God is the beginning of deliverance.

Subsequently, our salvation is rooted in acknowledging our sinful selves, confessing our sins, and placing our faith in God’s merciful love revealed in Jesus Christ. With regard to the subtlety of the devil to deceive and break into our spiritual space, Saint Paul writes: “Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your freedom by some second-hand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ.” To escape the snare of the devil, we must lift the ancient gate of our spirit for Jesus Christ alone. He alone is the gate to the heavenly pasture. We open our spiritual gate to him by setting our hearts, minds, and devotion on him. He bids us hate everybody and everything, not excluding self, to be his disciple and escape the snare of the devil. Saint Paul gives the same admonition. “You must live your whole life according to the Christ you have received—Jesus the Lord; you must be rooted in him and built on him and held firm by the faith you have been taught, and full of thanksgiving.” It is by obeying this admonition of Paul that we grow into a sacrament of Jesus Christ, through spiritual union with him. In this sense, we understand our spiritual space also as a marriage chamber. In deep faith and love, we receive the Son of Man in our spirits and bear the fruits of this knowledge and love in our thoughts and actions. It is impossible to be united with him without this consecration of minds and hearts to him. “In him you have been circumcised, with a circumcision not performed by human hand, but by the complete stripping of your body of flesh.”

We see the example of this total consecration in the Son of Man. To achieve the complete enmity between the Son of the Woman and the seed or offspring of the serpent, the Eternal Word hypostatically united himself to the Man, Jesus Christ. As Paul testifies: “In his body lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your fulfilment, in the one who is the head of every Sovereignty and Power.” Because Jesus Christ is the Eternal Word made man, our faith and love for him is directed to the Son of God, who gives all to the Father. Hence, by faith and love, we are ordered into one mystical body of Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. The Gospel has an example of how the Son of Man cooperated with his Father through prayer and spiritual desire. “Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came, he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them apostles.” Our spiritual circumcision is to cut off self-love and plant our mind and heart desires in Jesus Christ, so that we may consistently draw life from him and grow into him in spirit. Planted in him in faith and love, divine power will flow from him to heal our spirits, souls, and bodies from their sinful conditions.

Let us pray: O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.        


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