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Live
Letters Nineteenth Sunday
in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
August 11, 2000The author continues to offer directions for Christian behavior which are based on the fundamental theme that he has been treating throughout Ephesians, i.e., the unity of the body of Christ which is the Church.
In this Sunday’s reading he calls on his readers not to sadden the Holy Spirit who is the bond of unity in the body (cf. 4.3 f.) and who had given them the godly identity they would carry into eternity. They were to give special attention to avoiding sins of speech and the sinful mind set that underlies these sins. Instead of all that sort of divisive conduct they were to practice thoughtfulness and understanding toward one another. They were to forgive as God had forgiven them. In doing that, they will be expressing their family resemblance in Christ and will be loving as Christ loved, even though that love cost Him His life in sacrifice.
Sins of speech in a church context did not go out of fashion in the first century. Our culture does not approve of big displays of irate passion, and raising our voice in public is considered bad form. Yet there are plenty of ways in which we injure one another and the community we share through what we say. Little remarks that raise questions about somebody else’s sincerity, ungenerous interpretations of another’s motives, a barbed comment whispered to the person next to us: that all works against the oneness that Christ meant us to share in our togetherness with Him.
Sometimes not speaking can be as destructive as what we say. A word of encouragement left unsaid, a helpful question left unasked, a kind greeting left unoffered: that, too, can undermine the vigor of Christ’s body.
More important than these specific actions or omissions, however, are the basic moral attitudes that we find at the end of our passage: love and forgiveness. These are fundamental characteristics of Christian life and underlie practically everything else that our faith calls for from us. It’s important for us to understand them.
Loving means wanting or willing or doing good for the person that we love. Loving can involve moonlight and roses but it can also involve kindness and care offered to somebody of whom we are not particularly fond. Love is an act of the will, deciding and wanting something good for somebody else. It doesn’t necessarily involve affection. That’s why Jesus can tell us to love our enemies. He’s asking us to do good to them even if they want and do no good for us, even if our emotions find them repulsive.
Forgiveness is a subdivision of love. It means loving in spite of the evil that another may have done to me. Forgiving does not involve pretending that no evil has been done or that the harm we have suffered really didn’t hurt us. It does not require us simply to forget what has happened as if it never was. No, forgiveness allows us to be quite explicit and quite realistic about the harm we may have suffered, but it calls us to want and do good to the person who inflicted the harm in spite of what the person has done.
Our Catholic Christian faith calls us to love and forgive, and the reason it calls us to love and forgive is because of who and what we are. We have been remade to share the life and the likeness of Christ. As a result of our faith and our baptism, Christ now lives in us and enables and invites us to express His life through our own life. Our behavior as believers is a matter of consistency, of acting in accord with the life of Christ within us. We are not called to act as if Christ were in us. We are called to act in certain ways because Christ is in us.
Christ’s life in us does not guarantee that these basic Christian virtues of loving and forgiving will be easy or without unpleasant consequences. Christ, the prime lover and principal forgiver, ended up on the cross! Yet His death there was an expression of consistency, of carrying out the logical conclusions of who He was and what He had come to do. As a result the Father saw His death "as a sacrificial offering" that had "a fragrant aroma." In the same way, our struggles to live out the life of Christ in love and forgiveness can seem to push our capabilities to their limit, but the struggle to remain faithful constitutes a pleasing sacrifice to God.
Just as the whole of God’s saving work can be summed up in the notion of divine filiation, in our being remade to share the life of Christ as His adopted brothers and sisters (cf. Eph. 1.3-6), so the whole of Christian morality can be summed up in the concept of imitation and consistency. What does God want from us? He wants us to act in accord with what He has made us to be.
What our live letter tells us this Sunday is relatively simple: in accord with the life of Christ that you share, respect and foster the unity of Christ’s body by loving and forgiving as Christ does.
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Conversation Questions
Have I ever harmed the Christian community by my speech (or my silence)?
Have I ever witnessed people sacrificing themselves for the good of the Christian community?
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