Your Humanity Is Not the Enemy
8th Sunday after Pentecost (1962 Missal)
I was invited to celebrate Mass according to the Missal of 1962, otherwise called the Traditional Latin Mass or the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Under the universal law established by the Holy Father, Pope Francis and in accordance with the pastoral guidance of the Archbishop of Baltimore, I have permission to do so for established communities of the faithful who regularly celebrate the pre-Conciliar Mass. In this case, the invitation came from the pastor so that he could have a brief respite during the summer. —Fr. Justin
The readings for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost are Romans 8:12-17 (“ We are debtors, not to the flesh, that we should live according to the flesh”) and Luke 16:1-9 (the parable of the Dishonest Steward).
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Flesh” is a thorny word in the New Testament. At once, it is the hinge upon which our salvation hangs; and at the same time, it is, well, the thorn in our side that gets in salvation’s way. We find the same word sarx being used by Saint John in the prologue to his Gospel announcing the marvelous fact that “the Word became flesh.” And today we find Saint Paul using the same word to encourage us not to live as “debtors to the flesh” but to be “led by the Spirit of God.”
The 4th century theologian Saint Gregory Nazianzen memorably summarized the flesh’s supreme importance in winning our salvation when he wrote, “What was not assumed was not healed.” In other words, what of our humanity the Son of God did not take on was not saved from sin and was not raised to share in divine life. As Christians, we rejoice in the mystery of the incarnation—the enfleshing of God to share fully in our humanity; and, thus, we rejoice in the flesh—in our flesh—which has been assumed, healed, and sanctified by Christ the Lord.
Yet the New Testament more often than not uses “flesh” or sarx in a pejorative sense. Saint Paul sets up in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans the famous dichotomy between the flesh and the Spirit from which today’s Epistle is taken. On this view, the flesh is something not to be rejoiced in but spurned, resisted, and denied. Living according to the flesh, the Apostle tells us, means that “we will die.” That is to say—and as we know all too well—should we follow the flesh’s lead we will move away from and not toward the salvation Christ the Lord has won for us.
Tension is not something everyone appreciates or even tolerates to the same degree, especially in religion. But there is a tension here that we ought not to ignore or attempt to neatly resolve. The Christian life in many ways is like a suspended fourth in music or a play without the final scene. We can anticipate the resolution, but we have not arrived at it yet. We must live with and in the tension without the satisfaction of the fourth falling gracefully into the third or the actors hand-in-hand taking a bow when their performance is finished.
Flesh is one point of tension in the Christian life, at once holding for us two seemingly incongruous meanings: (1) that the Son of God took flesh to share in and save our humanity; (2) that our flesh actively resists the salvation the Son of God came to bring. It is true, we are being pulled in both directions, like Plato’s image of the chariot being drawn by two untamed horses. But the tension that I want to reflect upon is not merely the feeling of being caught in a game of tug-of-war between what we should do and what we want to do. No, the tension I’m speaking of is the tension of how we think about the flesh itself: Is the flesh good or bad? More specifically, is my flesh good or bad? What should I think about my body and my passions? My thoughts and my emotions? My hopes and my fears? Is all this good or bad?
Let me clarify: We can look qualitatively at specific actions—instances of sin or of virtue—and say, well, it’s a mixed bag. Sometimes my flesh is good and sometimes my flesh is bad. But I want to ask the question at a more fundamental, existential level. Is my flesh in and of itself good or bad? How do I conceive of it? Do I see myself at war with myself, like Napoleon strategically plotting to outmaneuver the Russian Czar? Do I treat my flesh like a gladiator’s, constantly needing to be trained and disciplined by hard and rigorous means to beat my flesh into submission? Do I strike my breast during the Confiteor at Mass with the strength of a seismic blow so that every cell in my flesh feels that it is being punished and whipped into shape?
I am being dramatic, and I am (perhaps) exaggerating. But having heard tens of thousands of confessions, and having myself at times considered my own flesh as my worst enemy, I am confident that I am not creating a straw man who can easily be torn town. I also want to say—and again I speak from personal experience—that this way of thinking is more common among Catholic communities—such as this—where the Mass is celebrated in a more traditional manner, as a strict adherence to doctrine and morality typically go hand-in-hand with a strict adherence to the rubrics of the sacred liturgy.
I recognize that I am a visitor, and I am asking that you take me at my word when I say that I try with every fiber of my being to follow completely and wholeheartedly the Church’s teaching on doctrine, morals, and worship. But I also want to say—to you and to myself—is that we ought to be more gracious to ourselves, more merciful to our flesh. I do not mean to say we should not take growth in virtue seriously. I do not mean to say we should not resist sin with all our might. I do not mean to say God does not care about our actions, whether they be good or evil. All I want to say is that I do not think it is healthy for us to see our flesh as the enemy. And I do not think it is theologically correct to do so either, since Christ the Lord tolerates no enemies, and had he seen our flesh to be opposed to his divinity, he would not have assumed it. “Grace perfects nature and does not destroy it,” Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches. This nature, this flesh, that belongs to me, with all its rough edges, is what Christ the Lord assumed at his incarnation—his enfleshment with my flesh, to share in my humanity.
Thus, as we strive for virtue, as we practice the works of asceticism, as we do (!) deny our flesh and seek to live according to the Spirit, we must do so with a spirit of humility and trust. Your humanity is not the enemy. Your humanity is what Christ wants to enter, take to himself, and redeem. Seeing our flesh in that way makes all the difference in how we go about living the Christian life, how we persevere when temptations come and challenges arise, how we put ourselves back together after we fall short, and how we make it through this valley of tears to the end, to that place of refreshment, light, and peace.
If this has resonated with you, I’d like to propose a spiritual exercise for your prayer. Think about how you typically go to confession and think about Jesus’ parables that have to do with reconciliation and the various characters within them. How do you see yourself? Are you the dishonest steward of today’s Gospel who enters the confessional fearing the Master’s severest punishment for your sins? Are you the servant who has failed to increase what the Master has given you who hangs his head upon his return? Are you the son who has squandered his inheritance and lived as if God your Father were dead and returns to him in shame? Jesus reveals mysteries in parables so that we might relate to them, and there is a time and a place to find ourselves in each of these characters and more. But while many parables describe mercy from the penitent’s perspective, there is only one parable that seems to have at least as much to do with God’s perspective, the Prodigal Son, which might just as well be called the parable of the Merciful Father. Here, we see God’s heart. No matter what we have done, and no matter how much we might beat ourselves up over our sins, the Father embraces us warmly and joyfully as his son or daughter who was dead and who has come back to life, who was lost and has been found. If that is how God looks at us always, even when we feel that we are in the pits and are completely separated off from his love, then I say, we should pause and be more gracious and merciful to ourselves. For if God is pleased to love us in our humanity, then to hate the very humanity he loves would be a very great act of impiety indeed.
On the last day, when we are called forward by the Master to give an accounting of our stewardship, we will be asked to give an accounting of our humanity—how we have lived in our flesh. What the Master will be looking for is the extent to which we allowed Christ to shared in our humanity. If we are to invite him into our flesh, we cannot spurn it. We must see it as the humble manger in which, daily, he desires to be born, amidst the filth of our life. For what he assumes, he will heal; and what he we do not allow him to assume, he will not heal.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Homily preached July 14, 2024 at St. Mary, Hagerstown.
Good to see I can still read Fr. Justin's homilies even though I can no longer hear them in the Cathedral.