Memorial of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr
I do the grocery shopping once a week, on Saturday. Somehow over the years, the way we’ve found for making our family life work involves making a menu of the week’s recipes, writing out all the ingredients we don’t have, adding to that any lunch box items, and random household items, and stuff that the kids need for school.
As a consequence, my shopping lists are usually long, Long lists can be a problem, as many of you have no doubt discovered - not only because they’re long, representing a couple hours of errands - but also because it’s really easy to forget one of the things on the list! It seems like every week I come home, laden with grocery bags and milk jugs - and someone will say: oh, Mom, do you have my ________? And I will scratch my head and wonder how I forgot it, because it’s right there on my list, surrounded by check marks and so forth!
Today’s scripture from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (5:18-25) features just such a long list of works of the flesh that we Christians ought to avoid. Paul calls this list “obvious” - and, just like my grocery list, so it is, in a way!
But “obvious” isn’t the same as “easy to remember” or “easy to do.” Even though Paul tells us we “are not under the law” if we’re led by the Spirit, I find myself admitting that I am often caught up in rivalries, or acts of selfishness. And that’s why living a Spirit-filled life can be so difficult!
Jesus hints as much to the Pharisees in today’s Gospel (Luke 11:42-46). He suggests that they follow some of the laws, like paying tithes of herbs (which often went to support widows and orphans), but they forget other laws to the point that they are like “unseen graves” that people walk over. That statement really is an insult, because in Jesus’ day, people would whitewash graves so that they’d be visible to others, and no one would accidentally walk over one and incur accidental impurity. So by comparing the Pharisees to unmarked graves, Jesus is telling them that they are stumbling blocks to others - causes of making other people impure - even as the Pharisees are trying, in vain, to show themselves off as people who follow God’s law strictly!
The point is, we all will fail at following God’s law. Even the saints would say of themselves that they live out God’s love badly. Their constant prayer is to be able to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Today we observe the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a very early martyr and bishop of the church (consecrated by Paul himself!). Ignatius writes this prayer about his martyrdom: “My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God.”
To follow Jesus is a daily task, and one that we need to support not only by constant devotion, but also by constant awareness that we are likely forgetting something on “the list”. What that should do is make us more humble, more prone to prayer, more aware of the fact that all of us humans are in the same situation of seeking after God’s light, and so often failing! Today, let us pray for strength to follow God’s light, and yet humility to acknowledge all the ways we probably miss the mark.
- Jana M. Bennett