Attaining Full Dignity In Life Series

Gospel of Life

Monday of 27th Sunday in Course

The letter Paul wrote to the Galatians is arguably the most intense book of the New Testament. Jews who were not quite Christianized, who thought that the Way of Christ was simply some Jewish sect, had insinuated themselves into Paul’s communities in Galatia, up in the Black Sea region of what we call Turkey. They insisted that we are Jews first, only then followers of Jesus. Thus they insisted that Gentile converts practice the entire Jewish law, all 600 plus commandments, as a prerequisite for membership in the community. Leaders of cults do this–they tell the unwary that there is some special knowledge or gnosis and some special practice that must be done to be fully a member. But knowledge and dual kitchens and kosher food were never the way of salvation. The way is not a set of works. The Way is a person, Jesus Christ. To those who were left out, who were too poor to be part of the Pharisee crowd, Jesus gave hope. He even gave hope and healing to Gentiles. The crowds of sick and outcasts, as St. John Paul wrote, the ones who followed him always found in his words and actions a revelation of the great value of their lives and of how their hope of salvation was well-founded. Human life cries out for help, like the half-dead Jew on the Jericho road. Through the ministry of Christ in his Church, such lives attain their full dignity.

But it’s not just the sick, the injured, the mugged who are affected by the words and works of Jesus. All of us are weakened and sickened by sin. Only we who recognize how our lives are impacted by the evil of sin can discover in the encounter with Jesus the most precious reality. When we encounter Jesus, really embrace him, we find the truth and authenticity of our own existence.

Moreover, in the life of Jesus, from start to finish, we find a kind of dialectic between the fragility and uncertainty of human life and the affirmation of that life’s value. The One who at his birth found no room in the inn, in his life had no place to rest his head, and in the end was laid in a borrowed tomb. Yet it is this very life, this human existence united with the divine, that is the certain path for our salvation and that of every human existence. God made himself poor so that we can become rich, and certainly it is in this Eucharist that we experience that reality most physically. God, revealed through lowly bread and wine, is our life, our glory, our power.

How can we respond to this wonderful gift? Moreover, how can we not respond? We must develop the sensitivity of the Good Samaritan to the troubled mind, heart and body we encounter on the road. We can’t pass by or pretend we don’t notice when someone has a long face, or looks hungry, or is sitting at the back of church in tears. Be present to that person. You don’t have to say anything. Just sit closer than six feet and pray quietly. Look helpful and maybe you can be helpful. Jesus went out of His way during His whole life. We ought to be able to do something like it for ten minutes, shouldn’t we?