Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Judeo-Christian view of death is that it was a consequence of our first parents’ choice to sin. As St. Paul says, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23) and “just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all” (Rom. 5:12). Still, the Book of Wisdom makes clear: “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” In fact, it is “by the envy of the devil, [that] death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”
Jesus Christ was born to vanquish the enemies of sin and death. And you will say: Christians die every day! Yes, but the effects of sin and death are not felt for the faithful. Just as the Kingdom of God, and therefore heaven, begins in this world for the baptized, so can the effects of death affect those of Satan’s company.
The very first words of the Book of Genesis talk about how God created everything that is. What was there was “without shape and formless” (Gen. 1:2). The original Hebrew words for this void were the same used for the gods of the pagan peoples the later Israelites lived among, what we translate as idols. Anything that is evil, that is, less than from God is always an abscess – an absence of life that slowly kills. So it is then that we experience death when we accept “no god” instead of the Lord.
Catholic spiritual writers often saw the love of money as a particularly unnatural vice, that of avarice. Money itself was morally neutral but the love of it was idolatry. And so, it is natural that when Christ came to overcome death and sin, he would not leave a void but fill it with a spring of life. “For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Paul, “that though he was rich, for your sake he became poor so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Now St. Paul says to the Corinthians – and us – that we should be charitable in the same way to others. How do we counteract the wages of sin and live abundantly? We give out of love for Christ. Rather than leaving a void, we share in God’s love that always goes out of itself and creates more.
Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections