13^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

[Romans 6:11]

How different the Gospels strike us when we read them in the light of St. Paul's description of the Christian as a man who has in a real sense died and is now living in Christ, possesses a new life that is not simply his own, but is really Christ's life, in him. Thus the Christian is not simply a good man, a reformed sinner, but he is truly a new man, a new creature, whose life is not his own, or at least not absolutely his own, but is in fact a true participation in the life which absolutely belongs to one man only, Christ Jesus.

This runs counter to what men tend to think about themselves and their "life" understood as their life-force, what makes them alive, a living being as contrasted with what has no life in it. Men tend to reduce this "life" force in themselves to something purely biological, a kind of organic battery that is re-supplied by eating, but which will one day run out of energy, much like a rechargeable battery we use these days. They don't see life as more than biological, and they don't see this force as coming from beyond this world, something or someone utterly beyond this world, beyond the biological, no matter how much it is now tied to the biological.

The wise men of ancient societies would never have reduced "life" so to the biological, because they knew that the chemical/biological cannot of itself explain itself, and that man's "life" or living activity cannot be reduced to the biological. Life for them remained a deep mystery, something that was ultimately explainable only at the very source of being itself, and they let it go at that.

The Christian knows more. God has revealed Himself to be pure "Life" and the source not only of all beings that exist, but the source of their existence, and above all the source of the life that makes whatever lives, live. God's Life is the source of life in whatever has life, produces that life, sustains that life, even when there are other created elements that are also part of this sustaining of life. Thus life is a gift, and it never is autonomous, always depends upon others, and above all on its ultimate source, the God who lives.

St. Paul echoes the revelation of the Book of Wisdom when he says that death was not caused by God, but by man, and that the cause is man's sin. Sin, every form of sin, is antithetical to life, is a rebellion against Life in that it is a rebellion against the Giver of Life, that is the God who is Life. Sin causes death, every kind of death in the case of man, even biological death, but above all the death of the even greater Life that God produces for the soul, the Life we call Sanctifying and Gift, or simply "Sanctifying Grace." Man, by sin, lost this gift of Life, and also the lesser gift of life in the body as a consequence. Only God could restore it.

Thus Paul says that Christ's death was a sacrifice offered to overcome the sin of Man, the sin that causes death of the body and the soul. Christ's resurrection, on the other hand, was the restoration of Life (with the capitol "L") in mankind, the beginning of new Life for all men, a Life that now is shared with us by Christ, a Life which we can share forever, if Christ communicates His Life to us, and if we are dead to sin.

Man has to die in very real sense, a two-fold sense, if he is to share this new Life in Christ. He has to die with Christ on the Cross, that is, share his saving death sacramentally, and we do that first in Baptism, and then in the other sacraments He gave us. Ths when I die to sin, that is, when my sins are forgiven, it is not simply by a decree from God, but I die in Christ, pass through His death and receive the reward of His death, nothing less than the death of my sins. Only His death destroys sin, and this destruction of sin is the absolutely necessary condition for His Life to take hold in my soul, to be given to me as my own Life, even while it remains always His Life.

This is what we Christians mean by participation in God's Life, that we actually come to have Christ's Life in our souls, even while it always remains also in its source, the living Lord, in His body and soul. From the first moment of that new life in us, we are new creatures, and the presence of the Life of Christ in us itself demands that we continue, paradoxically, to die in profound ways, to die to our sin and our sinful inclinations, for sin alone can forfeit this new Life. Life for Paul, and also for us, is now Life in Christ, Life from Christ, Life for Christ. We are no longer our own, and we really never were simply our own. Even our natural life comes from God and always depends upon God. But this new Life is infinitely greater, for it is God's own Life in us, and that gift requires that we die to all that is not compatible with God, and place God and His Life (in us) above every created good as well.

Only from this perspective of what has happened to each of us, through and in Christ, can we begin to understand things in the Gospels like the things we heard today: "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Not even family can be preferred to this Gift which comes only in Christ.

Or "he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." No one can have Christ's Life who does not share His Cross and share it daily by dying to himself.

And again, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it." The life we lose is the old life of sin, which is really death, and the Life we find is the new Life in Christ which is infinitely greater, the very Life of God.

"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." These are Paul's words that summarize the Christian's Life, and are the foundation of the Christ's way of Life in this world. Once I truly consider the matter, become aware of the Gift I have received, keeping the commandments is no longer simply a moral issue, but a response to the Gift I have received, the necessary way of accepting, holding on to and being grateful for the greatness of the Love that stands behind that Gift. It is the way of Love.