fourteenth Sunday Ordinary

Fourteenth Sunday Ordinary
July 3, 2005

"You are not in the flesh... you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you... For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit... you will live." (Romans 8:9-13) I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones." (Matthew 11:25-30)

Jesus prays in gratitude to his Father for the spiritual wisdom revealed to common folk. Learning and education can sometimes obscure simple truth. The spiritual life is revealed, not learned in books. My grandfather, not an educated man and a self professed agnostic, often referred to "them educated idiots". As a kid I wondered how much of this was a recognition of this truth, and how much was sour grapes about his college-educated brother. Probably both. On the other hand "common sense" isn't always right. Grandpa was flat wrong in his opinions about the superiority of white people.

St. Paul writes about flesh, body and the life of the Spirit. Recall that "the flesh" does not refer to the body, but to something like "self-absorption". The life of the spirit is openness to God's life in everything and everyone, to gratitude for every experience, and recognition of our absolute dependence on the Most High for everything we are and do. Several of my friends and I have a running joke that "after all, it is all about me", which we trot out at key moments when we are feeling the most needy. There is a serious side to this. When we are feeling the least (or most) in control we are inclined to want to regress to this principle of the flesh. We do not "conquer the flesh". The spiritual life calls for a gradual absorption over a lifetime of the "little, selfish me" into the larger, more generous, expansive and accepting "me". This is the way of life over death.

In recent years I have thought quite a bit about my body and what is and is not going on with it. What is this mysterious connection between body and spirit? I sometimes hear people refer to "the battle" with ALS or cancer. I have never experienced it this way. Struggling with or against the body seems only to create anxiety and frustration, further alienating body and spirit. (This may also be true of other "battles" which we presume to wage against sin, crime, and evil. The more we battle, the worse it gets.) The military analogy does not get me very far when applied to the spiritual life. My experience tells me that there is no such opposition, even though my body does not always do what I want it to (an understatement in my case). My body is not "bad", although it does not seem to always want to cooperate with the spirit as it should.

Let us pray for a renewal of the life of the spirit in which tolerance, respect for each other and acceptance of our own and others' limitations will prevail.