Today’s readings provide powerful messages about the Gospel and deliverance from evil.

Paul’s letter to the Romans begins with the saving power of the Gospel.  Too often we fail to contemplate what we are being saved from, which is a daunting question.  Paul reveals God’s righteousness by showing the reality of God’s wrath against sin.   Readings earlier this month emphasized God’s mercy toward those who turn to him in repentance.  But this reading describes the awful and corrupting effects of doubling down in pursuit of sin instead of repentance.  Those effects include sins of the flesh, but they also include more insidious changes in our thinking that prevent us from recognizing the goodness that accompanies truth.  

In his great work The Lord, Romano Guardini describes this corrupt condition, distinguishing it from mere error: “The spirit that errs is not yet impure – for example when it judges facts falsely, uses words incorrectly, confuses images.  It is impure when it is indifferent to truth; when it no longer desires to think cleanly or to measure by the standards of eternity; when it no longer knows that the dignity and honor of truth are its own dignity and honor; when it besmudges the sense of words – which is the sense of things and of existence itself – robbing them of their austerity and nobility.”    

But there is an antidote.  Guardini explains: “Divine worship protects the purity of spirit.  As long as a person bows his head before his Maker as before one ‘worthy’ because he is holy and true, that person will be immune to intrinsic deception….  That is why something must exist in which the truth of the heart can constantly renew itself, in which the spirit can be cleansed, the eye cleared, the character strengthened.  And there is:  adoration.” 

Like Paul’s letter, today’s psalm points us toward a witness without words coming from the majesty of creation. When we pause to contemplate this wonder, we are led to bow to our Maker.  But we who possess the light of the Gospel have access to an even deeper truth of redemption and forgiveness. The Gospel is about flesh and blood of God being sacrificially given for us in a love that stretches our human understanding.  In humility, we receive this gift in the sacrament of the eucharist.  With thanksgiving, we adore the giver.  We go out bearing His gift through changed lives that embrace the reality of the generous and loving reign of God.  In doing so, we are rescued from corruption and renewed in our thinking as well as our living. As our Lord teaches in today’s gospel lesson, neglecting the truth about our inner being and its need for cleansing makes us fools.

Lord, help us to avoid the path of fools by choosing to revere and worship you in all your glory.  Let us remember what we have been saved from, including our vanity, our disordered desires, and our tendency to suppress realities that make us uncomfortable.  And let us understand the goodness that accompanies life with you, here on this earth and beyond.  Please be merciful and keep saving us until our earthly journey is over and we can behold your glory face to face.  Thanks be to God.