"If You Put To Death The Deeds Of The Body, You Shall Live"

 

While serving as a priest in Iowa, a local evangelical minister invited me to attend a conference being offered for all of the Reformed ministers and their wives in the state. A minister gave a series of talks on the theme of “mortification,” a subject once familiar to Catholics, but not usually mentioned, as I found out, among Reformed, “born-again” Christians.  The speaker drew on early Reformed (Calvinist) theologians on the subject, in order to explain to his audience that “mortification” was not just a Catholic pre-occupation, but had a place among Reformation Protestants, too. The minister sought to explain to his audience that Christians needed to “put to death” in themselves whatever was not of God, including sin and the inclination to sin, such as desires to “get more and more” (covetousness). In response to his talks on “mortification,” one person after another asserted that they had nothing to “put to death” in them, because they had been “born again,” and were “saved.” They were already “holy,” they kept asserting, because of their faith in Jesus Christ, and all talk of “mortification to sin” in a “true believer” made no sense.

Apparently, similar kinds of thinking (really, non-thinking) are common among Christian “believers” today. These folks style themselves “born again,” “saints” or “holy,” who “believe in Jesus, and got saved.” Whereas they call “unbelievers” “sinners,” these “saved” Christians think that they really “do not sin,” and have nothing to “put to death” in their lives, in their souls. They always do God’s will. Or so they imagine.  Spiritual blindness takes many forms.

Would that these “saved” Christians studied the New Testament documents with open minds, and not with the blinders of their hardened beliefs. In one passage after another, early Christian writers tell all human beings—Jews, Gentiles, Christians—to keep undergoing a change of heart, conversion, growth in holiness. Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:21: “Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” I suppose these true believers would answer, “Oh, but we always do the will of God.” Therein lies the problem. It could be called self-deception, or lack of self-awareness. It is the same attitude of the Pharisees who belittled the teaching of Jesus and his call to conversion and holiness. It could be our attitude more often than we wish to admit.

Everyone—“believer” and “unbeliever” alike—needs to take seriously the words we hear from the Apostle Paul this Sunday (Romans 8:13):  “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  Either one is continually putting to death one’s self-will, selfishness, greed, lust, hatred, pride, laziness, and so on, or one is sliding into a spiritual death. What does spiritual death look like? Surely it looks like “holier-than-thou” attitudes, it looks like a hardened heart towards others, like a neglect of one’s own spiritual life, like a desire for more and more “stuff.”  Spiritual death also takes the more subtle form of a culture bent on “having fun,” constant entertainment, simply ignoring the need to seek God daily. Spiritual death looks like the abyss of darkness in my heart and in yours, if we will but face the truth about ourselves, and daily seek to live Christ, not act out of our own darkness.

For the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

Having just celebrated Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Church now focuses our attention on honoring the One God, who in the Christian tradition is symbolized as “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Each Eucharistic celebration is a prayer to the Father by Christ Jesus and his members (the faithful), by the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church.   Among the questions that we may ask on this Feast day—especially immediately following Easter-Pentecost, is this: How does one experience Christ, and how does one experience the Holy Spirit? Is it one and the same experience, because God is one and simple?   God is utterly simple, but we are not. In our movement into God, we are drawn by God in various ways. Christians—men and women in faith-union with Jesus Christ—have realized at least since the death and Resurrection of Christ that Jesus still speaks His word to the faithful (in scripture, in church teaching, in the living magisterium, in members of His body, in daily events, and so on); and we have understood that Christ’s love for us individually and as his mystical Body is real, personal, intense, life-giving. A believer in Christ experiences both Christ’s love and his wisdom in many and various ways. If he does not, he should at least begin to wonder, “Do I really have faith at all? Is my faith enlivened by love, or just more or less empty belief?”  Faith living by love brings us into a real union with Christ, and that includes with his word (wisdom, teaching), and his love (fully and publicly demonstrated on the cross). Does the believer also experience the Holy Spirit? If so, how is the Spirit’s presence distinct from the awareness of Christ dwelling in the heart of the believer?  Nearly forty years ago, while studying St. Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome, chapter 8 (especially verses 9-11), I observed how the Apostle, so gifted by spiritual experiences, interchanges his names for divine Presence in the believer:  “Christ,” “the Spirit of Christ,” “the Spirit of God,” “Spirit.” The Apostle can variously name the Divine power indwelling the heart or mind of the believer. It does not matter, in reality, whether one calls the indwelling Presence “Christ” or “Spirit of Christ,” and so on. What matters is the awareness of this divine Presence, its life-giving effects, and one’s personal “living by the Spirit” by “putting to death” actions contrary to God (“deeds of the flesh”).   For the most part, however, Christian faithful have used the term “Holy Spirit” to name God experienced as love, joy, peace, the power of self-control, forgiveness, enlightenment, wisdom, understanding, and so on. When speaking of divine Presence as personal, heart-to-heart, "I living in you, yo living in me," Christians have more often spoken of the presence of Christ Jesus. "Christ" names God as personal: "I love you". "You are mine." The "Holy Spirit"names the same God experienced by impersonal effects, especially love, joy, and peace.  God is One, and ever beyond our understanding, yet always present to each one who will but attend.

On Ascension and Pentecost: Changing Perspectives As We Change

The understanding of Christian dogmas and symbols of faith change as we change. As the goal of life is to mature into a living union with God, as we grow into this faith-union, our understanding of our faith and practice must necessarily change.  In my early years, I simply accepted the events of Christ’s Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit in a literal way, so that I believed that these events occurred as described in St. Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. But if someone had asked me, “What difference does the Ascension make in your life?” or “What does Pentecost mean to you?” I would have been confused and befuddled, and not known how to answer.  

Later on, as a Benedictine monk and then as a Catholic priest serving in parishes, I began to emphasize various themes on these two feasts in order to communicate to fellow Christians something of the meaning of the events celebrated. For the Ascension, I emphasized the physical absence of Jesus Christ from the world, and connected that to the necessity to have a faith and love for the God we cannot see, who is ever beyond our understanding. Then for Pentecost, I would speak about the closeness of God, to God dwelling in the depths of the believer’s heart or mind, whether experienced as present, or known only through simple trust. During these years I surely accepted the dogma of the Trinity, and I experienced a degree of peace and joy in faith that connected me to God.  Faith union was growing.

As I have aged and had more years to experience the reality of God, and move further a creedal belief, I have sought to connect our liturgical celebrations with our faith and love for God, the One who loves each and all beyond our understanding, and who alone is truly wise and just. On the feast of the Ascension, I may still use the account of Jesus’ return to the Father as the basis for the proclamation, but I keep asking myself questions in order to help make our celebrations more real and personal for those who attend. Whether or not I share the questions in a homily, I must listen to the questions and wonder: In what ways is Christ present to you, to me, here and now? In what sense did Jesus leave his disciples in the world, and in what ways is He ever with us? What is meant in the Church when we declare that “Jesus has ascended to the Father, and is Lord?” In what ways does Christ rule over human beings—some, or all—and in what ways is his ruling less than complete, not yet fully established? How does Jesus Christ connect us to the God who says, “I AM WHO AM,” to the God who is the Beginning, who brings forth everything that exists out of nothing—“the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” the God of Moses and the prophets, the God of Jesus Christ, the God who “enlightens every soul coming into the world”? Who is this God, and how can we experience His presence, and love Him more truly, obeying “every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”? What is meant by “the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts?” I often wonder: Can one discern in one’s soul the difference between the spiritual presence of Christ, and the Holy Spirit?  And so on.  How can I share in God reaching out through word and sacrament into the heart and mind of the faithful?