Homily for Thursday, Week 29 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday
Week 29 of Ordinary Time

Oct. 21, 2021
Rom 6: 19-23                                                 
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“Present your bodies as slaves to righteousness for sanctification” (Rom 6: 19).

Paul reminds those who will read his letter at Rome that, in their weak human nature, they were once slaves to all kinds of lawlessness—meaning wrongdoing against God’s laws.  That’s true of all of us in one way or another.

When Paul refers to “parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity,” he means not only their physical bodies and sins of impurity, but also their mental and emotional capacities and other sins that degrade them, e.g., arrogance, greed, drunkenness, gluttony, lies—anything that enslaves them (or us).

“What profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed?” he asks (6:21).  He reminds us that such attitudes and behaviors end in death.  Our bodies pay the penalty of sin, and there’s always the danger of eternal death.

Eternal life, on the other hand, comes from “becoming slaves of God” (6:22).  So the Roman Christians and we have surrendered our bodies and all their capacities to God’s righteousness, i.e., to living as people who’ve been sanctified by the grace of Christ and who walk with him.

When we surrender to God, we offer him our bodies with their infirmities; our minds with their focus on humility, patience, purity, and temperance; our hearts with their focus on our Lord Jesus and on kindly treatment of the people around us.  In that righteousness we find not slavery but freedom.