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Letters Eighteenth Sunday
in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
August 3, 2001In this Sunday’s reading (the last of our series from Colossians) Paul begins the second main part of his letter, the part concerned with moral guidance.
He begins with a general principle that links this part of the letter with what went before. He had told the Colossians that the center of salvation consisted in Christ’s being in them and living in them. They were now sharers in the life of the risen Christ. Since that is so, he now says, you have to live accordingly. You have to pursue heavenly things rather than earthly concerns. Your life in Christ is not visible to everybody around you, but it is no less a new life for that reason. In fact, when Christ comes again in glory, your life in Him will be manifested. (The implication is that, therefore, you have to start living now a life that is in accord with your future glory.)
Before all else, he tells them, you have to root out and destroy "the parts of you that are earthly." This doesn’t mean that Christian believers don’t need to be concerned about the realities of their life here on earth, but that they should do away with everything that doesn’t fit with their new heavenly life in Christ. Then he gives a little list of the kind of behavior he has in mind: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed. These are all varieties of selfishness.
So is lying, playing fast and loose with the truth for our own benefit. This is not in accord with what you are, he says. You have a new self that requires still further development as you learn what it means to exist in the image of God.
Finally we have a repetition of a teaching that we have already heard from Paul in First Corinthians (12.13) and Galatians (3.27 f.): distinctions that used to divide people from one another (Jew from Gentile, slaves from free persons) are no longer significant. It is not that everybody is suddenly the same, but that human differences are no longer significant in comparison with the likeness that all can share in Christ. If Christ is everything and in everybody ("all and in all"), nothing else matters much. Even Scythians, the most barbarous of the barbarians, can belong!
Christian moral behavior is a matter of consistency, of living out our daily lives in a way that fits in with who and what we are: extensions of the life of the risen Christ. All of Catholic Christian moral theology, all the do’s and don’ts that we learn as we grow up and develop in our faith are simply specifications of the basic Christian vocation to live in Christ Jesus. And Christian maturity consists, to a great extent, in learning that the details of behavior that we sometimes find so burdensome are nothing other than the particulars that derive from our participation in Christ’s life.
It should come as no surprise, then, to hear that all of Christian morality consists somehow in recognizing Christ and in giving ourselves to Him in the unfolding of our earthly life. If these are the basic Christian virtues, the fundamental sins are idolatry and selfishness.
Idolatry consists in making something into god which is not God. We tend to thing that idolatry is something that savages engage in, grass-skirted natives dancing around a statue. It’s a sign of a lack of civilization. But that’s not really true. Some of the most civilized societies in human history have been riddled with idolatry. When people overlook God and decide that religious faith is basically irrelevant and instead give their attention to success or comfort or looking good or being popular, that’s idolatry. In our reading we hear Paul telling the Colossians that greed, unbridled acquisitiveness, is idolatry, too. All these are types of idolatry and we shouldn’t be too quick to tell ourselves that that sort of thing is not a danger for us.
The other basic sin is selfishness, putting ourselves and our needs and desires first at the expense of everybody else. Most of the ten commandments are concerned with selfishness. Most of the sins, big or small, that people - we - commit are varieties of self-seeking. Sins of impurity and theft, sins of violence and desire, sins against family and society: they’re all manifestations of putting ourselves first.
Idolatry and selfishness are the basic sins, and basic virtue consists in acknowledging God in our lives and in extending God’s love to others. This brings us back to Paul’s fundamental insight: salvation consists in living in Christ Jesus.
And that’s what makes us all one. Greeks and Jews and Scythians all belong together because they all share (or can share) the life of the one Christ. Self-seeking distinctions between various kinds of people are not appropriate in the light of our sharing the one life of the one risen Christ.
Living a Christian life is not really very complicated. It’s quite simple. It means living in Christ Jesus. Of course that doesn’t always make it easy!
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Conversation Questions
Are any parts of my life incompatible with Christ in me?
How does Christ in me help me deal with the differences I find in the people around me?
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