Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
St. Paul begins the eighth chapter of his Letter to the Romans with an exclamation that God has done what humans were unable to do. In Christ Jesus the law of sin and death has been conquered by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Though Jesus was crucified in the manner of a common Roman criminal by the expressed sinfulness of human beings, this was not the end of the story. We know that he was raised, conquering death so that we may have life in the Spirit of God. We now live in that life according to the Spirit; the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated, but we will not know it in its fullness until Christ comes again. We are still a pilgrim Church, still “the people that longs to see [God’s] face” (Ps 24:6).
We learn from the parable in Luke’s gospel that we have been given new life in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; he has made it possible for us to bear fruit by “cultivating the ground” and “fertilizing.” Yet, we must respond by living according to the Spirit of Life.
When we are constantly warned to live in fear by our culture, this can be difficult. We turn on the news to these endless warnings. Hurricanes, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorists, thieves, car accidents, airbags, drunk drivers, airplanes, guns, o-zone depletion, global warming, cigarette smoke, air pollutants, heart attacks, AIDS, cancer, H1N1, immigrants, Dr. Kevorkian, and crazy shoppers on Black Friday, we are told, will all kill or harm us. Lock the doors, be afraid!
Of course, we are not called to be foolhardy, to rush into danger for danger’s sake, but if we allow these messages to completely drown out the proclamation of the gospel, it can be all too easy to become paralyzed, to be concerned with the protection of our own skin over bearing fruit and living in Christ’s life-giving Spirit. Today let us pray that we may have the grace and courage to find our hope, our security, and our trust in Christ, who conquers all of our fears.
- Tim Gabrielli