29 January 2019 - like obedient children

Today's Readings

(Audio)

We know that obedience is important. We know that Jesus was perfectly obedient to the Father and praised obedience in others. Yet when we ourselves try to obey we quickly become frustrated.

Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, 
and not the very image of them, it can never make perfect 
those who come to worship by the same sacrifices 
that they offer continually each year.

We try our best to obey the law. Even so, our best efforts are hit or miss. We have successes, occasionally, but we can't seem to eliminate failures. We can't seem to grow in the freedom Jesus promises to those who follow him and know the truth he teaches.

The problem is often that we try to obey on our own. We try to fix our wills, in order to simply will the right thing. This didn't work for Paul and it won't work for us.

For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members (see Romans 7:22-23).

Given that Jesus praises obedience and isn't just setting us up to fail what are we to do?

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (see Romans 7:24-25)

Obedience, counterintuitively, does not begin in our will, but in that of Jesus himself.

Then he says, Behold, I come to do your will.
He takes away the first to establish the second.
By this "will," we have been consecrated 
through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.

We must come to Jesus and take his yoke upon us rather than trying to make things work on our own. His yoke is easy and light. In his yoke we find rest.

Even Mary does not obey God on her own strength. She is the one who is full of the grace she needs to obey from her birth. She receives this grace from Jesus. It is thus that she is perfectly his mother both spiritually and according to the flesh.

For whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother.

We are invited to be brothers and sisters of Jesus by sharing the yoke of the obedience which he has already perfectly offered for our sakes.

Burnt offerings or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, "Behold I come."