DESTRUCTION AND REBUILDING OF STRUCTURES

FRIDAY, FIFTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Isa 38:1-6,21-22,7-8; Isa 38:10-12,16; Mt 12:1-8

You Put All Things Under Him

The renewal of our bodies follows the birth and development of the spiritual man. This renewal of what seems to be dying is a foretaste of the life of resurrection that is to follow when the Lord calls forth our bodies from the grave. The death of Christ that we experience in our bodies as we make the interior journey is the destruction of the structures of sin that our former lives, that is oriented away from God, has raised within us. When these old and sinful habits, which constitute the sinful structures in us, are destroyed and rooted out, a new self which truly bears the image of God and has likeness to Jesus Christ, for it is truly Christ living in us, arises and gains control of affairs. Concerning the breaking of the old structures and the rebuilding of new ones, David prays to God in Psalm 51:8-10, 17-19. “Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones which you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good to Zion in thy good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, then wilt thou delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on thy altar.” Broken spirit, heart, and walls are all references to the structures of sins within us that must be destroyed, and the recreating and reconstruction of these are through the interior life from God.

Our journey to the holy mountain of God, through interior life, is made possible by the death and resurrection of the Son of Man. Through his precious blood, which purifies us of all sins, we gain access to the interior path in faith. The goal of the interior journey is for us to be transformed into Christ in the spirit. The interior journey is difficult but not unnatural to us, for we were made for this purpose. The difficulty comes from the structures of sin that bar us from entering the divine path to God. The mission of the Son of God in human nature is to destroy sin and its structures within us, and to free us to enter the way to the mountain of God. He proclaimed his authority to achieve this in the Gospel when he responded to the Pharisees who accused his disciples of breaking the sabbath law. “Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry—how he went into the house of God and how they ate the loaves of offering which neither he nor his followers were allowed to eat, but which were for the priests alone? Or again, have you not read in the Law that on the sabbath day the Temple priests break the sabbath without being blamed for it? Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple.” The authority of the Son of Man comes from his knowledge of the will of the Father, which he does at all times.

The same knowledge of the will of the Father is the end of our interior journey to the mountain of God, Jesus Christ. As we make progress in the inward journey into Christ, we become one with the will of the Father as Christ was. Hence, we have maintained that our new spiritual life is that of Jesus Christ. The same authority that he exercised on earth as one with the Father comes to us as we gradually grow into the fullness of his stature, knowledge, and wisdom. The response of our Lord to the Pharisees indicated that the priests in the service of God in the Temple do not concern themselves with the Law, but with doing or giving the proper service to God as the situation or occasion demands. The same applies to us when we commence our interior journey to God. He willed this journey from the beginning and desires it for all his children. Furthermore, our bodies are temples of God as dwelling places for the Spirit of God and doing the divine will. Sin desecrated the temples of our bodies, which God has now reconstructed through the death and resurrection of his Son. As the psalm of David we quoted above indicates, our bodies are places of sacred sacrifices to God. One who has commenced the interior journey is making himself a sacrifice pleasing to the Father. Because King Hezekiah lived a life that was pleasing to God, God renewed his life and granted him more time to serve his holy will. His prayer was heard because, alive or dead, he was pleasing to God. “For you, Lord, my heart will live, you gave me back my spirit; you cured me, kept me alive, changed my sickness into health.”

Let us pray: O God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honour. 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.