Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

“They were all amazed!" - (Luke 4:36a)

The reading from chapter 2 of the first letter to the Corinthians today omits the famous passage that precedes it where Paul speaks of the wisdom of God that has been kept secret throughout the ages and has only now been revealed to believers through Christ’s death and resurrection. And Paul states that, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it so much as entered into the human mind what God has prepared for those who love God.” This great passage has usually been understood as referring to the next life in the resurrection. But the following passage, which we hear today, where Paul speaks of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, tells us that this secret that God has prepared for those who love God is very much available to us now, today. Paul says that this Spirit plumbs even the very depths of God’s self and that this same Spirit has been given to us, for, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God.” Further Paul tells us, “The one who is spiritual, however, can judge everything but is not subject to judgment by anyone,” and even more, that those who are in the Spirit now have “the mind of Christ.”

Jesus demonstrates something of what this life in the Spirit looks like in his visit to Capernaum in the fourth chapter of Luke we read from in today’s Gospel passage that begins the daily liturgy’s journey through Luke we will now take up for some time to come. In the signs (or “mighty works”) of Jesus’ casting out “unclean spirits,” healing all who were brought to him and speaking with an authority and power the people had never experienced before, Jesus is demonstrating what this life in the Spirit can look like for us. In the words of the 145^th Psalm today, “The LORD lifts up all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.”

As Jesus said in Jn 6:63 (after many of his disciples took offense at his teachings about his body and blood), “It is the Spirit alone that gives life, the flesh is useless.” For both the Lord and for Paul, the flesh is understood as everything that stands in the way of the Spirit and living spiritually. Obviously, this includes all seven of the deadly sins, especially pride, as well as what the ten commandments tell us. But there are other less obvious things that keep us from living truly spiritually (in the Spirit as opposed to in the flesh). Fear is certainly something that keeps us bound. Do we know what we are afraid of and are we willing to confront those fears with the Lord to help us? “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.” Self-centeredness is certainly another as is procrastination. Then there are those beliefs we have that we cannot possibly be one of those who God is calling to holiness, that there is no real reason to venture deeper (that’s just a fantasy). For, in truth, we are quite frightened by what asking for more might mean (we think of what Jesus told the rich young man who dared to ask what more he could do!)

Ultimately, the one thing that really keeps us from living truly spiritual lives and abandoning the ways of the flesh that have become so habitual that we cannot really conceive of living without them (eye has not seen nor ear heard), is that we imagine it in transactional terms. We ask ourselves, what is it going to cost me? What will I lose in this? And, of course, we imagine the answer- a lot! Everything! We think of it as jumping off a cliff and the natural reaction is to step back immediately in fear.
The reality, if we would only dare to believe it, is that surrendering to the Spirit of God doesn’t really cost us anything except abandoning our old beliefs and understandings and the willingness to simply put ourselves entirely in God’s hands. Just seek to become willing. God will do everything else. If we would surrender, we would find to our great surprise that it would completely free us. All our fears would begin to slip away. We would become aware of all sorts of ways to proceed and answers to situations that before always left us reeling in darkness. Clarity would descend upon us. So much that seemed so difficult and burdensome would become quite effortless. We’d discover that God was doing it all for us, that God was doing all the heavy lifting. We would calm down; worries and anxiety would fade away. We would find peace about ourselves, ceasing all that secret self-punishing we did for so long, and we’d discover that we could love one another and be loved, that we could forgive everything. Judging others and the fear of their judgements would begin to vanish away. We would begin accepting things where before we railed against them, finally achieving probably the greatest acceptance of all, of ourselves, knowing that we are loved and cherished by God.

Unfortunately, we think of that as the illusion and our present state as the reality. We think of having tried before and failing when what we were really trying was to make it happen by ourselves, by our own imaginary power, instead of simply letting go and letting God who has all power. Begin by praying every day for the willingness to surrender and seeking to trust in God. Keep praying that and God will do everything else, if we’d only dare to believe it and only allow God to do it.