Life in the flesh vs. life in the Spirit

IN his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul makes this distinction between life in the flesh and life in the Spirit, something that is very important to know if we want to abide by our true dignity as children of God, created in his image and likeness, and sharers in his divine life and nature. (5,18-25) 

 At the moment, there seems to be a worldwide trend toward pure sensualization or carnalization, leading us, especially the young, to be merely carnal, instead of being spiritual, to use terms defined by St. Paul. 

 It’s important that we develop a certain sensitivity to this concern because otherwise we would all be deluded by a very treacherous virus, a sweet poison that can truly harm us individually and collectively. 

 This is not at all about suppressing or disparaging in any way the value of the senses, the urges and the hormones, and the sentiments, feelings, passions that they produce. Neither the value of the physical attributes we have. 

 We just have to realize more deeply that they need to be ruled and directed by reason and ultimately by faith, hope and charity. Otherwise, we can be accused by Christ himself who once said of some people: 

 “They look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.” And citing a prophecy of Isaiah, he said, “Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes…” (Mt 13,13.15) 

 Let’s be spiritual, not carnal. That’s the ideal that we should aim at. It’s not a matter of suppressing our material and earthly condition, but rather of going beyond that level. That’s where the road to the fullness of our humanity can be found. That’s where we are freed from the constricting world of our senses, emotions and passions. 

 St. Paul said something to this effect. “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4,22-24) 

 In another instance, St. Paul talked about talking or preaching in a spiritual way and not just according to human and worldly wisdom. “My message and my preaching,” he said, “were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (1 Cor 2,4-5) 

 More clearly, he said: “We speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” (1 Cor 2,13) 

 This is a big challenge for us all. We have to learn to think, speak and act in a spiritual way, and not just mainly conditioned by our material and worldly aspects. 

 When we see a person, thing or event, we should not get stuck in the knowing their physical appearance or external characteristics alone. We should go beyond them, discerning the spirit that animates them. In this we have to train ourselves endlessly. We need to check if the spirit behind them is of God or not. 

 We have to learn to walk in the Spirit rather than to walk in the flesh. We have to train ourselves to think, speak and act in terms of our faith, and in intimate relationship with God and the saints. This is always possible and very doable!

Hypocrisy and discretion

WHEN Christ complained against the Pharisees about their hypocrisy with these words: “Now you Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inside is full of rapine and iniquity,” (Lk 11,39) we are strongly reminded of the danger of hypocrisy that can easily enter into our lives. We should be ready to protect ourselves from it, but learn also how to differentiate it from our need for discretion in our lives. 

 That’s because hypocrisy and discretion can appear to have certain things in common. Some hiding is involved in both conditions. But the former certainly is an anomaly while the latter is a necessity in our life. The former goes against sincerity, truthfulness and consistency. The latter seeks to protect the truth that can easily be misunderstood by those who are not yet prepared to accept it. 

 Of course, the only way for us to be able to differentiate between the two is for us to be truly united with God. Yes, only with him can we have the power to avoid hypocrisy even as we need to live discretion in certain situations in our life. 

 Nowadays, with the plethora of data and information, we have to remind ourselves constantly that truthfulness is not simply a matter of conforming these data and pieces of information to our own designs. We need to process these raw data by leavening them with the love of God and submitting them to God’s will. 

 To put it bluntly, we can only be in the truth when we are with God. Outside of him, let’s wish ourselves sheer luck, because the most likely thing to happen is to slip from the truth. It´s like chasing the wind. For all the excitement and advantages a Godless pursuit of truth gives, everything will just turn out to be vanity. 

 And so, prayer is a must. It’s what vitally and existentially unites us with God. Without it, we will just be on our own, an easy prey to our own weaknesses, let alone, the temptations around. 

 Very vulnerable to the temptation to distort the truth and to fall into the tricks of hypocrisy and pretension are persons endowed and favored with all sorts of talents, intelligence, position, power and who may already have attained a good level of sanctity. That’s because their situation attracts all sorts of temptations. 

 This was what happened to the Pharisees of Christ’s time. They were the privileged people of the time, occupying prominent positions. Sadly, they were blinded by their so-called privileges that led them to miss the very personification of truth himself—Christ. 

 We should regularly examine ourselves to see if we are still with God, guided by the faith he shares with us, or we are already relying on our own human powers alone, that can only do so much. 

 To distinguish between hypocrisy and discretion would require us to have a proper understanding of what truth is, where to find it and how to find it. It is also a matter of how and when to present it. 

 It also involves the question of motives. Truthfulness and discretion are not just a matter of producing facts and data, blabbering them indiscriminately. They necessarily have to consider the intentions and the circumstances also. 

 Most importantly, truthfulness and discretion will always uphold charity even if in a given moment such effort would involve a lot of sacrifice. It’s charity that would dictate the terms of discretion in telling the truth. Hypocrisy fails in this requirement.

The challenge of developing a vibrant faith

IN SPITE of the many signs and proofs that point to the credibility and necessity of faith, many people of Christ’s time still asked for signs to prove Christ was the expected Messiah. (cfr. Lk 11,29-32) 

 Here is one of Christ’s lamentations over this sad condition: “At the judgment, the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here.” 

 We cannot deny that we are notorious for having the same condition. In spite of the many things that truly point to why our Christian faith is credible and effective, we still prefer to be guided by our own estimation of things. 

 The following point in the Catechism tells us how our faith is to be properly understood and what motives we can have for regarding our faith as credible: 

 “#156 What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe ‘because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. 

 “So ‘that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps the Holy Spirit.’ Thus, the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability ‘are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all’; 

 “They are ‘motives of credibility’ which show that the assent of faith is ‘by no means a bind impulse of the mind.’” 

 Just the same, we really need to train ourselves to be always guided by faith and not just by our own reasoning, no matter how brilliant our reasoning may sound. This, of course, will require tremendous humility and self-denial on our part, since we always tend to rely more on our human powers. 

 Of course, faith would require the full use of our intelligence and reasoning. But we need to acknowledge that there are revealed truths of our faith, the so-called mysteries, that can exceed our power to understand. In other words, we are not expected to understand everything, but rather are expected to obey and believe these revealed truths due in the end to the fact that it is taught to us by Christ himself and now by the Church. 

 To be effectively and abidingly guided by our faith, it is important that we pause from time to time to see if we truly have our faith in God as the main guide, and not just our own reasoning and understanding. 

 It’s important that we do some disciplining of our reasoning because it tends to get contented only with the sensible and the intelligible in the many forms that they come and attract us. It can willingly let itself be held hostage by these dimensions of reality. 

 We know that our reason does not create the truth. It does not create the reality. It can only apprehend, reflect, process and transmit the truth and reality. It will always depend on a reality that is outside and independent of ourselves. And that reality goes beyond the natural and enters into the world of the spiritual and supernatural.