15 October 2015 - every hour i need you

What occasion is there then for boasting? It is ruled out.

We can't boast, whether we are Jew are Gentile, whatever our ethnic background, whether we are male are female, whether we are rich our pour, whether we are highly intelligent or less so. None of our inherent traits are grounds for boasting.

For there is no distinction;
all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.

What other distinctions do we try to draw between ourselves and others? Perhaps our behavior is better than that of the people in the secular world. It ought to be. But is this grounds for boasting? No! We don't do truly good things by our own strength. We are sinners deprived of God's glory the same as everyone else. At each moment we rely on his grace to keep us from falling back into that state of privation. We can't think ourselves better than those around us. We should instead think, "There but for the grace of God, go I". Being within his Church is a necessary condition of this grace, but it does not earn it in such a way that we can boast.

Instead of boasting and trying to make ourselves feel superior we cry out in solidarity with all the sinners of the world:

If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.

How much less, then, can we boast of the externals of our practice? How little value to compare ourselves to others and say, 'I go to church on Sunday.' It is necessary to go to church on Sunday but when it becomes a subtle comparison with others it is merely building a memorial to the prophets whom our fathers killed. They killed and we do the building, giving consent to their deeds. Rather than celebrating our heritage in an appropriate way we subvert it and use it out of pride and ego. This is precisely the sort of thing that confuses those on the outside of the Church and makes it difficult for them to recognize the truth.

You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.

We have to get over this need to create our own value as human beings. We have to become willing to receive our value from God. We have value because he loves us. He delights to pour this love upon us. If we are struggling to be valuable, to find our right to exist, let us pray instead that God may show us that he loves us before we do a single thing. He proves it because while we are yet sinners Christ dies for us (cf. Rom. 5:8).