7th Sunday after Pentecost 31.7.11 Forming character
The Gospel speaks of trees bearing good or bad fruit. If we are to be trees then we must be those that bear only good fruit.
We take it for granted that things in nature will do what they are supposed to do, without any argument.
But we also take it for granted that people will be sometimes good and sometimes bad; that it is very hard to predict what we will do next.
The problem is that we are not yet seeing human nature as refashioned in Jesus Christ. We are still thinking of the ‘old man’ in force before Our Lord came to renew human nature.
We still tend to look at Our Lord and His teaching as being out of our reach. A nice theory, and in His case, a perfect effort, but for the rest of us ‘mortals’ it is not seriously to be expected that we could do the same thing.
In fact, however, being good is our ‘true’ nature. It is what we are designed for, just as a bird to fly or a fish to swim, or a tree to bear fruit.
There was no ‘original sin’ of fish whereby for a time they were unable to swim; but there has been such a time for humanity - the time from Adam to Christ.
But, Christ having come, we now have a repaired human nature, not only repaired but improved upon the original. This is not generally understood; so we continue to live in slavery when we could be walking in glorious freedom.
With Christ dwelling in us it should happen over time that our character changes. We become Christ-like, of one heart and mind with Him. We start to see things as He sees them, to think, speak and act as He would do.
It may take time because every repair operation does. But there is a certainty about the process whereby we cannot fail to improve in our overall virtue if we let the power of Christ act upon us.
The biggest hurdle for us is just to believe this to be possible. Part of the slavery to sin to which St Paul alludes is that it lowers our expectations of what we are capable.
We can get a sense of what is possible by looking at life in Heaven and the life of Our Lady on earth.
Heaven. If we think of heaven nobody sins there. But why not? Because in heaven everyone would be so totally in union with the mind of God that no one would want to sin. But how can we get to heaven if we think that sin is normal or acceptable behaviour? We have to prepare for heaven by rooting out all impurities presently in us.
Our Lady. She was good all the time and we might ask, how could that be possible? How could anyone be like that? Simply because she understood that goodness was the natural course and also the greatest source of happiness.
We think that sin is a kind of short cut to happiness: that to cut a few corners on God’s law is better for us than to follow His line strictly. But Mary would tell us otherwise. The more we obey Him the more fully we experience the joyous freedom of a bird in flight.
So we can agree with the basic idea that to be good all the time is better than being good some of the time. We would understand this in every other area of our lives eg that cars should run; meals should be edible, travel should be safe....we want these things to happen and we notice the slightest imperfections.
But we don't see it in the whole way of living itself!
Jesus has made humanity new in Himself. Now He invites us to experience the new life and the new way of life which this involves. It will make us a lot happier than we have been so far!
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