Christ is All

Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time 2013 C

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?  All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation; even at night his mind is not at rest.   Ecclesiastes 2:21-22

 Christ is all and in all.  Colossians 3:11

“But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’  Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”  Luke 12:20-21

Piety

Our piety claims Christ as our life.  We put on Christ by our piety.  Scripture allows us by our prayer to grow into Christ.  We become what we read when it claims our hearts.  How we preach in life in the words of St.  Francis is the simplicity of our lives.  He teaches us to preach always by our lives and to occasionally use words.  It is wisdom at its best to be able to find Christ in all that we do.  Our piety invites Christ to come into our lives by what we are doing because it offers all we do to the Lord.  Ignatius instructs his followers to do all that they do in the name of the Lord.  Piety gradually claims the intentions of our hearts for the Lord.  We learn to discipline ourselves by piety.  We clear up the fogs that surround us by selfishness and work to give ourselves to those we serve in the name of Christ. 

Study

The toil and the anxiety of heart which comes from our vanity we study how to get around.  Naked we came into the world and naked we will go out teaches us the vanity of the riches we can give our souls away to obtain.  Study helps us to get rid of the earthy desires that are the result of immorality, impurity, passion and evil desires.  Idolatry is seen in the greed of our souls.  The things we sell ourselves short for we put aside when Christ claims our hearts and invites us to share his glory.  We let go of our old self with prayer, fasting and good works and thus we put on our new self.  Our study discovers that we are all one in Christ and there is not Greek and Jew, barbarian, slave or Free; we discover that Christ is all and in all.  We thus know that we are all created in the image and likeness of Christ.  He entered into our world by giving up all that belonged to him as God.  We enter into his world by losing ourselves in him by dying to ourselves to be born in Christ.  We put into practice Christ’s way of living life. 

Action

Our actions need to follow the example of Christ.  He emptied himself of his Godness so that he might be one of us.  God loved us so much that he was willing to surrender all to be like us.  Our journey is into creating in ourselves our own likeness to Christ.  There is no shortcut to putting on Christ.  We have to take up our crosses and follow him if we want to be all that we are meant to be.  We have to die with Christ to be raised with him.  We have to be true to the Christ image we find in our hearts.  We have to put to death the parts of ourselves that do not belong to Christ.  If we are going to hear the voice of Christ we need to put aside our selfish instincts and love our neighbors as ourselves.  This will allow us to be rich in what matters to God.  Then we will be able to say that Christ lives in us.