Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

We hear today of St. Paul’s description of our sinful human condition as slavery to impurity and lawlessness. Slaves are persons who submit their wills to the control of another—either through coercion or by self-surrender. We become slaves to sin by following our own desires rather than submitting to the Lord’s will. We become trapped in an addictive cycle of wrongdoing. Paul urges us to present our bodies “as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.” How is this to be accomplished? Jesus shows us the way. Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7-8). It was the fact that Christ willingly became a slave, a servant, obedient to the Father’s will that won for us our redemption. We are invited to surrender our wills to God, to become servants of God rather than of our own human desires. St. Paul says that through Christ’s resurrection we “have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God…and its end is eternal life…in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 6:22,23).

Let this be our prayer today: “My God, I desire with all my heart to do Your holy will, I submit in all things and absolutely to Your good pleasure for time and eternity…I am convinced by faith, and by experience that Your will is in all things as good and beneficent as it is just and adorable, while my own desires are always blind and corrupt; blind, because I know not what I ought to desire or to avoid; corrupt, because I nearly always long for what would do me harm. Therefore, from henceforth, I renounce my own will to follow Yours in all things; dispose of me, Oh my God, according to Your good will and pleasure” (Jean-Pierre de Caussade: Abandonment to Divine Providence).

Reflection by Br. Michael Marcotte, OSB