Mystical Word: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Jeremiah 20:7-9 | Romans 12:1-2 | Matthew 16:21-27
On Romans 12:1-2
In Romans 12-16, the final section of the letter, St. Paul calls on us to live justification by faith. Let us recall the main theme of the Letter to the Romans: by faith, everyone has access to the gratuitous love of God revealed in Christ. When we discover the divine love, we are gloriously free. St. Paul expresses this theme with the word “righteousness”: “For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous by faith will live’” (Romans 1:17). Here, the righteousness of God means God being God; God is being faithful to God’s own self. And God is gratuitous, incomprehensible love. God’s love is wildly free, a gift beyond all measure and all being. We cannot fathom God’s love for us. Thus, to be true to God, God showers absolutely everyone with tender and infinite love. God wants everyone to share the divine life.
God shows this love and righteousness to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. By this Paschal Mystery, God justifies us. God acquits us of all guilt and sin forever, even before we sin. We accept the amazingly wild and tender divine love in faith, that is, when we let go of self and abide in the divine presence within us.
St. Paul calls us to be faithful to divine love, to show that we trust in God’s love for us, by how we live. He wants us to be faithful with the faithfulness of Christ, which means walking the same path that Jesus walked, namely, dying to self and letting God raise us up. Real faith means letting go of self. The path of Jesus is the path of love and whole-hearted surrender to God: “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1-2).
Frank Matera points out that “Paul exhorts the Romans to offer their bodies (by which he means their very selves) as a living sacrifice to God. He calls this sacrifice of themselves their ‘spiritual worship.’ In saying this, Paul identifies the morally good life as an act of worship.”
The life of the Christian, one who follows Jesus into his death and resurrection, is a life of surrender. We offer not just our words or our minds but our whole person to God. Offering our bodies also suggests our surrender to God is not a one time act or only an act we make during a religious service. Rather we surrender throughout the day, throughout our whole lives and in every small moment. Spiritual worship means opening to God in one’s interior, secret from consciousness. It means praying beyond the mind in the silence, nothingness, and nowhere-ness of the Godhead. Here, we recall the poetic prayer concluding Romans chapter 11: a hymn to the divine incomprehensibility. Thus, spiritual worship here means letting go into the MYSTERY.
Coupled with whole-hearted self-surrender to God, St. Paul urges us: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Beyond the individual human ego lies the group ego. Every group, that is, every nation, state, county, political party, and religion has its own collective ego. Each group, even the family(!), has its own forms of attachments, resistance to love, defense mechanisms against reality, cruelty, and selfishness. St. Paul recognizes how easy it is to identify with the group ego and justify all sorts of selfish behavior, including all our social ills (exalting wealth, racism, sexism, demonizing the poor and marginal).
So, St. Paul urges us to transcend the age and our minds by faith, by letting go. It requires recognizing how the group ego blinds and controls us. It requires honesty with how much our attitudes do not align with the Gospel. And it requires hearts open to divine love so we can trust that letting go is for our eternal benefit. St. Paul calls us to be faithful to God’s love and mystery by being wholly occupied with the MYSTERY and letting go of the self (love is selflessness). Matera notes, “The justified no longer conform themselves to the old age. With their minds renewed, they discern and do God’s will, which allows them to offer themselves as living sacrifices to God.”
Life in Christ is grounded in the divine righteousness. As God is being faithful to who God is (love and mystery), we ought to be faithful to who we are in God (by being loving and accepting mystery – trusting God beyond the mind and letting go of self in prayer).