In his letter to the Romans this morning, Paul uses the analogy that makes sense to the people of his time. He speaks of slavery, which was seen then as a part of society. This image would be something everyone could identify with on some level. What he says is simple but also profound, and it boils down to this:
Either you are a weapon for God or for sin.
We are in a spiritual battle, a battle that we must fight with every ounce of what we have been given. We have a choice to make. We can be God’s slave, or we can be a slave to sin. Sometimes we make excuses or give up and accept that this sin is a part of us. We should be fighting. We should be allowing God’s grace to use us as a weapon against that turmoil inside of us.
The question I think today is this: are we struggling? The battle between sin and grace should still be raging inside of us, and much like a habit we think we have under control, it can reappear at any moment if we let our guard down. Again are we struggling? Because the mark of the Christian life should be that they are still fighting, not giving up, not accepting sin as a part of their life. That’s how we remain a weapon of God. We stay vigilant, awake. We get ready, be ready, and stay ready.
The “old us,” the person we used to be, will always be there just waiting for us to slip up, waiting for us not to fight against it. It will resurface when we least expect it. That’s why we must keep our prayer life and our spiritual life active, working on ourselves and our environment, constantly letting God wield us as weapons of righteousness and justice. Using Paul’s analogy, we have been purchased by the blood of the lamb, by the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and we no longer belong to the sin. A slave learns to do what his new Master tells him to do. He doesn’t continue to serve the old one. The servant has to become more and more aware of how things are done in this new household, this new relationship. He has to fight against habits that have been ingrained in him for as long as he can remember.
My last thought for today is this: Are you struggling to be Holy? Is it tough? Is it hard? Good. The fact that we struggle is not a sign of failure but of success. So fight, as if our lives depended on it, because they do.
A reflection on the readings for Wednesday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time: 10/20/2021