Word to the Wise
Thursday, October 19, 2023 - Thursday in the 28th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rom 3:21-30 and Luke 11:47-54]What occasion is there for boasting? It is ruled out. On what principle, that of works? No, rather on the principle of faith. For we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Does God belong to Jews alone? Does he not belong to Gentiles, too? Yes, also to Gentiles, for God is one and will justify the circumcised on the basis of faith and the uncircumcised through faith. [Romans]
OCTOBER 19 STS. JOHN DE BREBEUF AND ISAAC JOGUES AND COMPANIONS martyrs
In the encyclical Lumen fidei, co-written by Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, Pope Benedict speaks of faith as the result of an encounter with a love greater than any human can imagine. It is not an intellectual assent to a list of statements, no matter how true they may be. It is a relationship first and foremost. When St. Paul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, he discovered that his zealous efforts were resulting not in protecting the Jewish faith but were persecuting God in the person of Jesus Christ. In his Letter to the Galatians he writes" For through the law I died to the law, that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me." [Gal 2:19-20]
In the Gospel According to John, in the Last Supper discourse, Jesus says, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." [John 15:13]. This kind of love is more than a vague fuzzy affection or intellectual conviction. It is a recognition of our place before God and our place in God's creation - a kind of spiritual anthropology, as it were. All life is a gift of love from God and a stewardship to that particular part of creation that is the human person. This is why all human political/social/cultural decisions that result in the deliberate destruction of life are a rejection of God's love, whether it be in the terrifying destruction of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East or in an abortion clinic or death row or on the borders of any nation. Just who do we think we are???
Our Christian identity, in particular our Catholic identity, should mark us as messengers of God's love and an invitation to others to encounter that love and come to faith. St. Paul realized that his relationship with God was not by physical observance of Mosaic law but by acceptance of God's love manifested in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. All that we do as Catholics must spring from that. AMEN
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