WALKING WITH A SENSE OF DUTY


SAINTS ANDREW KIM TAEGON, PRIEST, AND COMPANIONS

1 Tim 6:13-16; Ps 100; Lk 8:4-15

Acquiring the Sense of Duty

Our Christian life is the greatest thing we possess, for its value is not just within the confines of this world, but beyond. It affords us communion with God and eternal life. As we live our lives here on earth, engaging in various activities and professions, we are also expected to deepen our spiritual roots in the mysteries of Jesus Christ and grow in spiritual life. God created us to know, to love, and to serve him. So, every one of our engagements and involvements should be directed towards achieving these. The otherworldly aspect of our lives is what the Christian faith enriches. Our profession of the Christian faith makes us reorient our minds, hearts, and wills toward the eternal goal, Jesus Christ. Our growth in spiritual life implies growing in our understanding of the meaning of life as Jesus Christ and nothing else. We can make progress in a journey only when we are conscious of our goal or the end of the journey, and we consciously take the direction leading to our goal. Are we aware that the Christian life is a journey? Do we know the goal? Do we know the direction or path leading to the goal? These are fundamental questions we must keep ruminating on as the days go by. We keep redirecting ourselves when we go wrong or follow the wrong path.

These are contained in the admonitions Saint Paul gave to Timothy in the readings this week. He urged him to always think hard on these articles of faith and his life in Jesus Christ to enable him to travel right and be a good guide for those following him. “Before God the source of all life and the before Christ, who spoke up as a witness for the truth in front of Pontus Pilate, I put to you the duty of doing all that you have been told, with no faults or failures, until the Appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Like Timothy, we all have a duty to live by our Christian faith, which is the witness that helps us and those listening to or looking at us. By leaving our Christian faith, Christ comes to live within and through us. Hence, Jesus Christ is now being revealed in our lives, even before his final Appearing, which will come at the last time. Those who are now living with him in spirit and in the mysteries would have been made like him in their daily dealings with him. God’s home is in inaccessible light to the senses, but those who live by faith approach him in spirit, for he is the father of all spirits and accessible to all spirits through Jesus Christ. So, cultivating our spiritual life and habits helps us dwell in his presence through the Holy Spirit he sent into our hearts as a testimony of our new spiritual life with him.

Our Lord taught this spiritual mystery to people using the parable of the sower. The word of God is the spiritual seed that sprouts a new spiritual life within us, and attendance to the word makes it blossom into a fruitful tree. “A sower went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some fell on the edge of the path and was trampled on; and the birds of the air ate it up. Some seed fell on rock, and when it came up it withered away, having no moisture. Some seed fell amongst thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. And some seed fell into rich soil and grew and produced its crop a hundredfold.” Our Lord calls us to make our lives a rich soil by our generosity with the word of God and the mysteries of our faith. Let us give our time to pray and meditate on the mysteries of our Lord, that his life may germinate and grow in us. The martyrs of Korea we celebrate today cultivated the Gospel of our Lord in their lives and became one in their testimony to God. They were not evangelized by missionaries, but by their personal interest and inquiries about Christian life. The secrecy of the conversion and activities, due to harsh persecutions, makes it impossible to put a date to the origin of Christianity there. As written, the first known martyrs are Paul Youn and James Kouen, who refused to offer sacrifice on the death of their relatives in 1791. Over ten thousand Korean Christians were executed over the following century. The 103 Korean martyrs we celebrate today are mostly lay people, which makes the Korean Church unique in its foundation.

Let us pray: O God, who have been pleased to increase your adopted children in all the world, and who made the blood of the Martyrs Saint Andrew Kim Tae-gon and his companions most fruitful seed of Christians, grant that we may be defended by their help and profit always from their example. 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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