The Seventh Sunday after Trinity (July 31, 2022)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Last week, we talked about how baptism immerses us into the Christ-story, regenerated us into a new life, and placed us in a covenant that comes with both divine promises concerning out eternal life with God in the Beatific Vision and a moral obligation that ties to that promise: we cannot expect to reach the beatific vision unless we live out our end of the covenant. Our reading this week sets us up to delve a little further into what it means to live out our covenantal obligation as our Epistle reading picks up in Romans 6 right around where we left off last week. So the question we might ask is what does it mean for us to live out our covenantal obligations? We can answer lots of ways but I think in today’s reading, there are three major points worth emphasizing: if you want to reach our endpoint and uphold our covenantal obligations, then we will (1) pursue the good; (2) produce fruit; and (3) develop a posture of self-reflection.

Now, last week, focusing on the topic of baptism, we were primarily focusing on God’s movement towards us as he gives us grace in the sacrament. 20th century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar summarizes what we discussed last week by saying, “In the New Covenant, ‘what we ought to do’ follows from ‘what we are.’” If we have been baptized, if our old man has died to sin, and if our new man is raised with Christ, then we should act like that’s true or else we’re acting contrary to our natures. Having received this grace, we turn our attention to our response to him, a response that’s only possible given the grace we recieved at baptism. So, having received the sacrament of initiation at baptism, the question is “What now?” In some ways, it might feel anti-climactic: we talk baptism up but sometimes we don’t feel that different after the emotional high wears off. Life marches on with all its mundanity and it’s very easy for us to forget about just how significant the grace we receive is. But baptism is always a beginning of a journey, not the destination. And so as those who have been baptized, our main purpose, our main objective is to pursue the Good. Now that can be kind of a vague way of saying it but there is no real distinction between pursuing the Good and serving God: he is the wellspring of Goodness, as St. James reminds us: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” This is what St. Paul is getting at when he reminds us this morning to “yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.” Pursue the Good. This is not a point St. Paul makes to us because it’s nice to do good things or something. He sees this as essential because it’s a zero-sum game: “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.” If you’re not pursuing the Good by serving God, then you’re a servant of sin. But if you’re serving righteousness, then you’re a servant of God. One of the Church Fathers named Origen reminds us that there’s a good kind of servitude and a bad kind of freedom. The good kind of servitude is when we give our lives to following God and obeying his commands and, perhaps surprisingly, this is where we find the purest form of freedom; the bad kind of freedom is when we live for ourselves, indulging in the passions of the flesh.

And the thing is that the path we take, pursuing the Good or indulging the flesh, has consequences. To detail these consequences, St. Paul utilizes the common image of a tree bearing fruit: “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” It is almost certain that St. Paul has in minds our Lord’s words in the Gospels. In Matthew 7:18, Jesus says, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” Building off that, in Matthew 12:33, he exhorts his listeners, “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.” So actions have consequences because they are what make us good trees or bad trees. Bad trees bear bad fruit, by which is meant the vices or Deadly Sins and their negative consequences. Conversely, good trees bear good fruit, by which is meant the virtues and the positive consequences that come with them. And so in Romans 6, St. Paul wants to remind us of these two paths and of the fact that we are always traveling on one or the other, which is why he leaves us with that reminder: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If you follow that road of vice, all you reap is death; but God has given us a great gift in Jesus Christ and so we should pursue that Good life through obedience to God.

If it’s true that we can be good trees or bad trees, then it behooves us to develop a posture of self-examination. Self-examination is both an experience and a process. It’s an experience because it has a form and it’s done at specific times; but it’s also a process because our need for self-examination never comes to an end, it is a lifestyle, a habit of turning our critical eye away from the actions of others and turning it in on ourselves. Only when we do this, present ourselves to God without the facades, without the self-justifications, without the pride can we begin to see ourselves for who we are. And in seeing who we are, we are able to intentionally order our lives towards the good because we come to an increasing awareness of who God is. I was reading a book yesterday about St. Augustine and the author of this book pointed out that it’s never the holy people who become celibate monks or people who don’t have drinking problems who become sober; it’s the people who are aware that they have a problem with lust who pledge themselves to celibacy or people who know they have a drinking problem who become sober. By reflecting on one’s own choices, proclivities, and struggles, one can diagnose their vices and the causes of those vices and take the right anecdote of virtue.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.