Lord, this is the People that Longs to See Your Face"

Today's Mass Readings

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 express 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” in the words of today’s Psalm. 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, immigrants, Dr. Kevorkian, and crazy shoppers on Black Friday, we are told, will all kill or harm us. Lock the doors, be afraid!

If we listen to these messages instead of the message of Christ died and risen, 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. Let Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, the Austrian farmer martyred because he refused to serve in the Nazi army, who was beatified in Vienna on Friday be a witness to all of us of life in Christ’s life-giving Spirit.
Timothy Gabrielli