The goal of Christian life
Father Stephen Bankemper
Guest
In the last few weeks, we have heard individual lessons that will aid our growth as Christians. For example, last weekend: forgive over and over (77 times in the translation we heard, seventy times seven in other translations); the weekend before that: if your brother sins against you, tell him his sin first privately, if he does not listen to you, with others, but not to retaliate, but to convert him; the weekend before that: there is nothing more important than one’s eternal life.
But while focusing on individual lessons is important, the danger is that our lives as Christians becomes just another version of if I-want-to-get-to-heaven-I-must-do-this-and-this-and-this. There is an overarching lesson that makes sense of all the individual lessons and can inspire us with the overall goal of our Christian faith; we hear it today in the first reading.
God says today through Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,/ nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord./ As high as the heavens are above the earth,/ so high are my ways above your ways/ and my thoughts above your thoughts.” (Is 55:8-9) If only this truth could become most prominent in our minds, we would be well on the way to holiness!
To understand this, we must understand the purpose and goal of the Christian life — it is not to become a good person, but to be transformed.
There are different ways to describe this transformation. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes it as changing from bearing the image of the “earthly man” to the image of the “heavenly man”:
“The first man was from the earth, a man of dust [Adam]; the second man is from heaven [Jesus]. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1 Cor 15:47-50)
How does this transformation take place? We heard this a few weeks ago (22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time) from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind …” (Rom 12:2) In the Gospel of the same Sunday Jesus put it this way to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! … You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Matt 16:23)
It is vitally important to know — lest our spirituality become muscular, so to speak, and Pelagian — that this kind of transformation is not something that we do, but something that happens to us. We have a part to play, but that part is what we do to open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
Regularly reading and meditating on Scripture is essential. How can we know the mind of God if we ignore the books that teach us that mind?
Prayer is next, of course, where God speaks directly to our soul and communicates what He wants us to do.
Finally, practice. The more we seek to live as the prophets and saints and, especially, Jesus, teach us, the more habitual a holy life will become.
Let us learn the individual lessons that come through the scriptures but let us keep in the mind the overarching purpose of the Christian life, to become people who think the way God thinks and value what God values, so that we may become like him.
Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.
