26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Nm 11:25-29
Second Reading: Jas 5:1-6
Gospel Reading: Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
Every baptized human is alive with two quite different kinds of life: natural life and supernatural life.
We inherit natural life from our parents at our conception. We acquire supernatural life from God at our baptism, our rebirth as a child of God, sharing his nature, so that we can truly call God our Father.
In God’s plan, these two kinds of life would have coexisted harmoniously in us. However, when Adam and Eve rebelled against him, they lost their integrity, or wholeness. Their internal harmony was destroyed, for as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body was then shattered.
This is the nature we inherit, with two kinds of life at war within us.
“My inner self agrees with the law of God, but I see in my body’s members another law at war with the law of my mind,” St. Paul says.
In his Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, which came out of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI wrote in 1965 that this battle was enjoined from the very origins of the world and will continue until the last day.
“Finding himself in the midst of a battlefield, man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity,” noted Vatican II.
Even when we do not break God’s law, we experience a temptation to try to bring it into conformity with the law of our bodies. For example, a man whose wife had left him and who now wanted to marry someone else, quoted St. Irenaeus – that the glory of God is man “fully alive” – and asked, “How can I be fully alive living as a single for the rest of my life?”
The question is: Fully alive with which kind of life, natural or supernatural?
St. Irenaeus meant supernatural life, for he continued: “Man’s life is the vision of God.”
In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells us which kind of life to favour.
“It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell,” he says. “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell.”
In the second reading, St. James condemns money, that mainstay of our natural life.
“Come, now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you,” he says.
Jesus was not suggesting that we escape the war between our two kinds of life by suicide or mutilation. He was pointing out that just as we would cut off a cancerous organ to save our natural life, so we should put to death whatever in our nature is rooted in earthly things in order to save our supernatural life.
St. James was not saying that money is bad in itself. He was saying it is wrong to put our trust in it, to lay up treasure for the last days.
“In the beginning, God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labour, and enjoy their fruits,” teaches the catechism. “The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race.”
In a fallen world, private property is legitimate but it does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of humanity. The ownership of property makes its holder a steward of providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others.
Our natural life will come to an end when we die, and everything rooted in it will be lost.
Our supernatural life will last forever, and, paradoxically, so will all the natural joys we gave up in order to help it grow.
“He who seeks only himself brings himself to ruin, whereas he who brings himself to naught for me discovers who he is,” Jesus said. “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in both print and YouTube form, at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver, and Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. The title of the presentation next week is Creation and the Fall. The course is entirely free of charge and no pre-registration is necessary.
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