The death of Our Lord on the Cross
reveals that we are meant to be perpetually dissatisfied here below. If earth
were meant to be a Paradise, then He Who made it would never have taken leave
of it on Good Friday. The commending of the Spirit to the father was at the
same time the refusal to commend it to earth. The completion or fulfilment of
life is in heaven, not on earth.
Fulton Sheen Victory
over Vice 1939: 99
Living a Christian life is at one
level a very simple thing: we follow Christ – we do what he told us to do, we
fashion our lives after the example of His. We pray because he told us to, we
read Scripture which finds its fulfilment and truest meaning in Him. We are
baptised like He was, we come together to do just what He did with His
disciples on the night before He died because he told us to ‘Do this’, so we do
– to be fed by Him
and fed with Him
so that we may share His life, nourished by Him and given a foretaste of the
heavenly banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.
He
calls us to follow Him by taking up our Cross and prizing our relationship with
Him over all the things of the world. It’s a bit more tricky, it’s a bit more
of an ask, in fact for many people it’s pretty much impossible – such are the
enticements of the world, and the fact that the world around us wants us to
relegate religion to the private sphere: it shouldn’t affect our lives, it’s
something which one can take out of its neat little box and wear for an hour on
a Sunday morning, like a hat or some gloves, and then forget about, having done
one’s public duty.
While
this may be tempting, it simply will not do. We cannot truly follow Christ if we
are not willing to lay down our lives for the sake of Him who died and rose
again for us. Baptism and the Eucharist are free, but living out the faith will
cost us our lives. And yet we should give them up gladly, even though the world
may well deride us, call us fools. In the Gospel Christ says to His disciples,
he says to us ‘Do not be afraid … have no fear of them … Do not fear those who
kill the body but cannot kill the soul’. We can laugh at those who pour scorn
upon us for all that they promise is of this world, fleeting, and of no real
value; whereas what Christ promises us is of God, will last forever, it is a
glory which can never fade – it is ours and is offered to the whole world for
free.
To
follow Him we need to die to sin, we need to turn away from all the selfishness
which separates us from God and each other, and instead live out the radical
love of the Kingdom – a love which forgives, a love which thinks of others before
ourselves. It is no good seeing this in individual terms; it affects us as a
society: we need to do this together – you and me, each and every one of us
needs to live not enslaved to sin, but as slaves for Christ, whose service is Perfect freedom, freedom
from the ways of the world and freedom to live the new life of the Kingdom of
God, here and now.
We
are called as a church to live out our faith together, praying for each other,
supporting one another, and relying upon God, and His grace, that unmerited kindness
and free gift, which we do not deserve, but which has the power to transform
us, to conform us to the pattern of His Son. This he pours out upon us in the
Sacraments of His Church, so that we might be conformed to His will: fed by
God, with God, to have life in Him. We can only do this if we rely upon God and
do it TOGETHER, built up in love.
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