20190906
SPIRITUALITY
OF SPONTANEOUS RESPONSIBILITY
06 SEPTEMBER,
2019, Friday, 22nd Week, Ordinary Time
Readings at Mass
Liturgical Colour:
Green.
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First reading
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Colossians 1:15-20 ©
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Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen
God
and the first-born of all creation,
for in him were created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything
invisible,
Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties,
Powers –
all things were created through him and
for him.
Before anything was created, he existed,
and he holds all things in unity.
Now the Church is his body,
he is its head.
As he is the Beginning,
he was first to be born from the dead,
so that he should be first in every way;
because God wanted all perfection
to be found in him
and all things to be reconciled through
him and for him,
everything in heaven and everything on
earth,
when he made peace
by his death on the cross.
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Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm 99(100):2-5 ©
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Come before the Lord,
singing for joy.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before him, singing for
joy.
Come before the Lord,
singing for joy.
Know that he, the Lord, is God.
He made us, we belong to him,
we are his people, the sheep
of his flock.
Come before the Lord,
singing for joy.
Go within his gates, giving thanks.
Enter his courts with songs of
praise.
Give thanks to him and bless his
name.
Come before the Lord,
singing for joy.
Indeed, how good is the Lord,
eternal his merciful love.
He is faithful from age to
age.
Come before the Lord,
singing for joy.
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Gospel Acclamation
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cf.Ps18:9
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Your words gladden the heart, O Lord,
they give light to the eyes.
Alleluia!
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Or:
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Jn8:12
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Alleluia, alleluia!
I am the light of the world, says the
Lord;
anyone who follows me will have the light
of life.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Luke 5:33-39 ©
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The Pharisees and the scribes said to
Jesus, ‘John’s disciples are always fasting and saying prayers, and the
disciples of the Pharisees too, but yours go on eating and drinking.’ Jesus
replied, ‘Surely you cannot make the bridegroom’s attendants fast while the
bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come, the time for the
bridegroom to be taken away from them; that will be the time when they will
fast.’
He
also told them this parable, ‘No one tears a piece from a new cloak to put it
on an old cloak; if he does, not only will he have torn the new one, but the
piece taken from the new will not match the old.
‘And
nobody puts new wine into old skins; if he does, the new wine will burst the
skins and then run out, and the skins will be lost. No; new wine must be put
into fresh skins. And nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. “The old
is good” he says.’
SPIRITUALITY OF
SPONTANEOUS RESPONSIBILITY
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ COL 1:15-20; LK 5: 33-39 ]
The first reading from St Paul speaks of the
unity that Christ has come to bring. He is the source of unity and He
brings us all into unity, both within ourselves and with the whole of
creation and all things that exist. His death on the cross, that
is, His whole life was lived for the sake of reconciliation. As St Paul
puts it, so that “all things are reconciled through Him and for Him.
Yet, when we look into our lives, we find
there is not only disunity within us. We do not live in peace with
others. There is so much division in our lives with our fellowmen.
Of course, the real source of this disunity springs from within us,
because we are not one within ourselves. We are not in touch with our
center, with our ground of being.
To overcome this lack of
unity within us, we resort to discipline and laws. We make laws for the country, for
institutions, for our society, etc so that we will all behave correctly and not
cause disruption and disunity. This was what the Jews did, this was what
the disciples of John did, and this is still the traditional Catholic
spirituality, with its emphasis on obedience to the laws of God and the Church.
Unfortunately, the laws,
for many of us, have become the end in themselves. We observe the laws faithfully but
without love or insight. We do not know how to bend the laws because we
want to play it safe. So we will throw away our food on Fridays because
we are required to abstain from meat. Oh yes, we keep many laws, we go to
Church on Sundays, we observe celibacy in the priesthood, we pray our Lauds and
Vespers – all these because the law says so. But by observing them, do
they make us more loving and more human?
Today, in the gospel, Jesus gives
us a new spirituality. But He is offering us a dangerous
spirituality. It is not meant for the unenlightened, the
uninitiated. No, it is for only for those who are aware of themselves and
who they are. Jesus was a rebel, a deviant in His day. He was a
non-conformist. He did not always follow the laws and customs of His day.
He did not conduct Himself according to how a rabbi should behave. That
was why He was considered a dangerous man, a nuisance to the peace and harmony
of society. Hence, He was crucified.
What is this new
spirituality all about?
He tells us in today’s gospel to act according to our nature – our true nature,
that is. So we do not fast when the bridegroom is with us, only when he
is taken away. We do not use a piece from a new cloak to put it on an old
cloak; we do not put new wine into old skins. In other words, Jesus is
saying: respond to the situation in a natural way. Be coherent.
Hence, if we are tired, then we sleep; if
we are hungry, then we eat; if we are lacking in knowledge, then we study and
read more; if we have to preach, then we prepare our homily well; if we want to
be a spiritual person, then we pray more.
But we must not misunderstand Him.
He is against discipline and laws that are blindly or merely externally
observed. But Jesus is not advocating lawlessness. He is
advocating spontaneous responsibility – actions that spring from the depths of
our being. The fact is that many of us do not behave according to our
nature. We eat more than we should, we eat less than we could, we sleep
more than is needed, we rest and recreate more than is necessary, we work
ourselves to death. Now, that is lawlessness. We are not true to
ourselves.
For this reason, I said earlier that the
spirituality Jesus is giving us is dangerous. Not everyone is
ready to live that way – only those who are true to themselves, those
who are aware of themselves – if not we will end up in lawlessness. That
is why we still need the laws for the time being because we have not yet learnt
to exercise spontaneous responsibility. We still need the laws to guide
and help us to maintain some kind of unity within ourselves and others.
But if we want to grow in deep
spirituality, we have to transcend the laws. We have to go beyond the
laws. We must act according to the Spirit in us. That kind of
person is truly a free man, a liberated man in Christ – a man who is truly in
touch with his center – a man who can be said to be in touch with God. Let us
pray that as we deepen our spiritual life, we will one day be able to cultivate
this kind of spontaneous responsibility that Jesus Himself lived.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All
Rights Reserved
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