THE PATH TO OUR ADOPTION

SUNDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Wis 9:13-18; Ps 90:3-6,12-14,17; Philemon 9-10,12-17; Lk 14:25-33

Our Spiritual Regeneration

We are created by God as tripartite beings, composed of body, soul, and spirit. Coordination and control are also in that order, with the soul coordinating and controlling the body's activities, and the spirit coordinating and controlling the soul's activities. The soul is the vital force of the body, and the spirit is the vital force of the soul. Subsequently, the spirit is the centre of control for the whole man. Hence, whoever has control over our spirits has the whole of us and determines us in all ramifications. God created us in such a way that we live on him. Thus, God himself is the life of our spirits; without his presence in our spirits, we are spiritually dead. Therefore, the spirit is our direct connection with God, our Creator. Our spirits are doors through which God gains direct access to our souls and bodies. It is a gate which only the King of heaven can access into our souls, but the lock is within and only operated by us. The free will given to us by God translates to our control over our spiritual gate. The evil one cannot pass through this spiritual gate, for it is only accessible to God. But he can enter our spiritual space through the windows provided by our love for creatures. When the enemy of our souls gains access to our spiritual space, he cannot enliven our spirit because only God can; he drives our souls deeper into darkness and spiritual death. As the Lord stated in the Gospel of John, he breaks in through the window to steal and destroy. But the Good Shepherd comes through the gate to tend to his sheep.

God did not create us to be ignorant of his will and purposes, for his will is the life of our spirits. He made us that we may be the temple of his Word. For this reason, he made our spiritual gate accessible only to the One who comes in the name of the Lord. The will of God became obscure when Adam and Eve disobeyed his revealed will for them. By their disobedience, they closed the spiritual door of God’s illumination of their spirits and opened the window for the evil one. The book of Wisdom expresses the burden that disobedience placed on the soul and body of man. “What man indeed can know the intentions of God? Who can divine the will of the Lord? The reasonings of mortals are unsure and our intentions unstable; for our perishable body presses down the soul, and this tent of clay weighs down the teeming mind.” Our teeming minds have the ability to process physical and spiritual data, but the darkened spiritual path makes it impossible for our minds to receive clear spiritual illuminations. Our souls need the control of the spirits to coordinate the body properly. In the absence of the spiritual life and light from God, our souls are overwhelmed by the inputs and demands from our bodies. Because our souls lack the spiritual vitality, they are partly dead and incapacitated, and cannot hold our bodies in life for long. “It is hard enough for us to work out what is on earth, laborious to know what lies within our reach; who, then, can discover what is in the heavens?” The light that comes from the Eternal Word to constitute our spirits enlivens our souls, which makes them able to support our bodies and their activities. The burden is unbearable in the absence of spiritual life and light.

Consequently, our bodily death is a result of our disobedience to the word of God at the beginning. By the disobedience of our first parents and our own disobedience, we lost sight of the path to perpetual life and light. The just sentence of God was the implication of our disobedience. “You turn men back to dust and say: ‘Go back, sons of men.’ To your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday, come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.” A better understanding of our difficulties and trials, as the results of our choices and actions, would help us rethink our ways and come to the morning or dawn of our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord. Without this understanding, our following of the Son of Man would be half-hearted. Therefore, the Lord calls out to the crowds seeking him. “If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple. Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The divine justice demands that we accept our just punishment and serve it with faith in the love of God, who wills our eternal salvation and happiness. To come to the Son of Man is to open the spiritual gate for ourselves; but to ensure that we will let in the Saviour and cooperate with him in total submission, we must put away self and every creature serving as a window for the enemy to enter the temple of God.

The cleansing and rededication of the sacred temple of God, which our spirits are, would take the sacrifice of the Son of Man, the spotless Lamb of God. The Father allowed this sacrifice because through it, we will be reborn in the Spirit of his Son as his sons. The Son offers this sacrifice because through it, he will live in each soul to do the Father’s will. The Holy Spirit sanctifies this sacrifice because through it, he will dwell in a multitude of souls, making them children of God. The renewal we receive from the sacrifice of the Son of Man is illustrated by Onesimus' transformed status. As Philemon received Onesimus back as a brother, and no more as a slave, the Father receives us back as adopted sons from his only Begotten Son, and no more as slaves of evil and sin. “I am sending him back to you, and with him—I could say—a part of my own self. …I know you have been deprived of Onesimus for a time, but it was only so that you could have him back for ever, not as a slave any more, but something much better than a slave, a dear brother; especially dear to me, but how much more to you, as a blood brother as well as a brother in the Lord.” Only by a whole-hearted obedience to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is able to send us back to the Father, as sons and his brothers, and no more as slaves to sin and evil. Hence, he demands we hate our sinful selves and creatures, to put the Eternal Word first in our lives. To do this is to regain the path of everlasting life and gain adoption in Jesus Christ.

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.