25th October 2025
Readings Romans 8:1-11; Ps 23:1-6; Luke 13:1-9
The phrase ‘in Christ Jesus’ appears dozens of times in the Letters of Paul that we hear in the first line of the today’s reading. For Paul it was a statement of his own standing before God, a status that he desired to share with those he proclaimed the Gospel to, the Gentiles who were outside the Law of Israel. Paul is assuring his audience that ‘the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death’. The language of law has largely disappeared from contemporary church life as moral theologians have devoted a lot of their energy in dropping the lexicon of laws from their discourse. An example of this is Bernard Haring, the renowned Redemptorist moral theologian who wrote a three-volume work in the 1950s entitled The Law of Christ; in the wake of the Second Vatican Council he replaced it with Free and Faithful in Christ.
While law has largely disappeared from theological discourse, people are drawn to the description of Paul that ‘the spiritual are interesting in spiritual things’. Such ‘things’ sit side-by-side on the shelves in many bookshops today, showing titles on such topics as self-help and mindfulness, awareness and angels, New Age and Eastern religions. The increasing involvement in spirituality indicates a personal interest and identity in interiority alongside a social/cultural signaling of transcendence. The reason for this is reflected in Paul’s half-line, ‘life and peace can only come with concern for the spiritual’.
Addressing his Roman audience (and readers down to our time) Paul reminds them that their ‘interests are …in the spiritual since the Spirit of God has made his home in you’. Paul specifies that this is ‘the Spirit of Christ’, combining the image of ‘home’ with belonging to, being in Christ. This indwelling is the basis of Christian spirituality, the source of God’s grace. It is also the hope of bearing fruit as today’s Gospel holds out, as proclaimed by the Psalmist: ‘The person with clean hands and pure heart, who desires not worthless things, who shall receive blessings from the Lord and reward from the God who saves’.
Kevin O’Gorman SMA