GOD'S WAYS AND OUR WAYS

SAINT CHARLES LWANGA AND HIS COMPANIONS, MARTYRS   

2 Tim 1:1-3,6-12; Ps 123:1-2; Mk 12:18-27

Highlights of the Trinitarian Communion

The encounter between our Lord Jesus Christ and the Sadducees in the Gospel is quite interesting and enlightening. The Sadducees devised a story about a situation or problem that seemed difficult and almost impossible for humans; they presented it to the Son of Man with the intention of trapping him. Their funny contraption was resolved, and their seemingly difficult problem was busted like an air bubble in an instant. The entire event reveals a glimpse of the difference between our ways and God’s ways of thinking and doing things. God reveals in the scripture that His ways is not our way; that as the heavens are far removed from earth, so his ways are removed from our ways of thinking and doing things. Cf. Isa 55:8-9. This draws our attention to what is required of one who intends to enter the communion of the Trinity of divine Persons. The work we must pray and let God achieve in us through the Eternal Word and the Holy Spirit He sends to us for our spiritual rebirth and transformation. This underscores the necessity of the death we must die to ourselves to live unto God. We must understand how impossible it is to change our natural life to please God or conform to God’s will. What is required is a complete break from our old lives; that is, death to self and the embrace of a new life in Jesus Christ. This is the meaning of our baptism into the death of Christ and our resurrection with him into a new spiritual and Trinitarian life.

All that our human efforts can accomplish is to present our old lives in different guises, and never a new or spiritual life. Only the power of God through grace can give and sustain a spiritual life in us. The new life that comes with the descent of the Holy Spirit into our souls is what Saint Paul reminds Timothy and us to live. “That is why I am reminding you now to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of Power, and love, and self-control.” The new life we have is lived in union with the Trinity. It is a life ordered by God, in which we must willingly participate by abandoning our own way of thinking and doing things; we are to draw inspiration constantly from the Holy Spirit. This is why the spiritual life is a constant witnessing to the Gospel and bearing of our crosses, as Paul continued. “So, you are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord, or ashamed of me for being his prisoner; but with me, bear the hardships for the sake of the Good News, relying on the power of God who has saved us and called us to be holy—not because anything we ourselves have done but for his own purpose and by his own grace.” Paul confirms the uselessness of pleasing God with our own effort alone. Spiritual life is more of grace, not human effort alone. Our effort is a participatory effort in working with the Holy Spirit to achieve God’s purposes for us.

One who lives in such union with God in faith has already entered eternal life. Hence, our Lord explained to the Sadducees that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead but alive in God. “Now about the dead rising again, have you never read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the Bush, how God spoke to him and said: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is God, not of the dead, but of the living.” Anyone who enters into communion with God in faith has eternal life, because it is a spiritual and everlasting life. This immortal life has always been with God and proposed to us from the beginning, according to Paul, but only revealed at the appearing of the Son of Man. Saints Charles Lwanga and companions entered this everlasting life through faith in Christ. Hence, they were able to defy the king and give their mortal life to witness to the Gospel. They were Ugandans who were killed by King Mwanga of Uganda. They were executed for being Christians. Charles and his 21 companions were killed for rebuking the king for his debauchery and his murder of an Anglican missionary, who was killed for praying from a book. They refused to allow themselves to be ritually sodomised by the king. They died between 1885 and 1887. May their prayers help us to embrace our new life with the Trinity and ignore the cravings of our human nature.

Let us pray: O God, who have made the blood of Martyrs the seed of Christians, mercifully grant that the field which is your Church, watered by the blood shed by Saints Charles Lwanga and his companions, may be fertile and always yield you an abundant harvest. Through our Lord Jesus, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.