[ Today's Readings ]
If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Under the law we sometimes try to do good, but we can't figure out what is important. We wind up with a box-checking mentality. We do the things that are the easiest to take pride in and do the least to transform our hearts.
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.
These you should have done, without overlooking the others.
It isn't that tithing on these small things is wrong. But it must not obscure attention to judgment and to love for God. We think about how we have such great attention to detail when we miss the bigger picture. We even come to think we deserve the seats of honor for all of the good works that we do. And perhaps other people even believe our fictions and we become "like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk."
There is only one antidote to this problem. We need to be guided by the Spirit. Without the Spirit we are left with the flesh: "immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like." Even our good deeds are tainted by these actions and motives. The thread is real: "I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God." This is biblical language for mortal sins. This is serious, but we need need to let this make us afraid.
If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
And we are guided by the Spirit. We are filled with the Spirit in baptism and confirmation. We have the power within us to conquer mortal sin. God himself wants to fill us with the fruit of the Spirit "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." We don't need be afraid of doing the wrong things or of not doing the right things. That is flesh thinking. Instead we need to focus on letting the Spirit direct what we do.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh
with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.
This is the secret that God wants to reveal to us today. He wants to fill us with the Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit so that we can walk by the Spirit free from the passions and desires of the flesh.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
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