25TH OCTOBER 2021
LIFE FROM THE SPIRIT
Rom 8:12-27
Ps 68:2.4,6-7ab,20-21
Lk 13:10-17
Our today’s readings, both, the first reading and the gospel, highlight the spirit as source of life and a powerful weapon against sin. In the first reading Paul writes to the community of Romans urging them to live according to their call and according to the spirit which is from God, and he does that by bring in the contrast between Spirit and flesh, showing that when we live by spirit we shall consequently avoid the temptations of the flesh because the Spirit we have is from God, it is the spirit which allows us to recognize the presence of God and above all is through the spirit we inter in dialogue with God in prayer, as Paul said in his letter: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Thus, we us human beings we are spiritual beings possessing a body which should be under the spirit because the spirit in our real identity. The body disappears after death but the spirit lives, hat is why when we live according to the spirit or according to God’s commands, we are choosing life.
In the Gospel the topic of living according to the spirit continues as Jesus rebukes the leaders of the synagogue because they forbade him to cure a woman who had been oppressed by an evil spirit and made her crippled for eighteen years. The laws are from the spirit when they serve and keep the dignity of all humans, but if they do not obverse these two requirements they are from the flesh and they legitimate sin.
What is the source of our actions in our daily life, do they come from the spirit or from the flesh? do we strive to live according to the spirit which is in us by observing God’s laws or we choose to be identified by the works of the flesh by falling into the temptations of sin. May God, who gave us the spirit of life help us to obey him and to live by the spirit and at the end of life we may be granted the joy of being eternally with him in his kingdom where only the spirt lives.
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