DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Friday, January 4, 2019

To the Church members at Philippi, Paul writes … “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. – Philippians 2:14-16a

Purity of soul is much more than the vehement keeping of a few selected rules … it is a quality of spirit, a quality of thought, a quality of intention, and a quality of Love.

Being blameless of life is not a matter of what one can get away with and still be “legal” … it is the fulfillment of both the human and the Divine within our living, a fulfilment of God’s hope in our Creation, a fulfillment of our love become more and more a More Perfect Love, a fulfillment of the Christ born within growing into full maturity.

I find that in the processes of religious zealotry, innocence and purity are not often considered, eventually cast aside as unnecessary.  In our obsession with the crusade, we slowly begin to rationalize our methods and means as being subservient to our ends.  If not vigilantly mindful, we allow our “cause” to demonize the quality of spirit where innocence and purity are found.  In his temptation of Christ, the Deceiver sought to lure Christ away with visions of power and success … but Christ not willing to sacrifice the innocence of His ways and the purity of His motives, declined such mortal enticement.

Of late, my Loved Ones, there has risen a form of Christianity that rationalizes away the need for innocence and the need for purity by way of a self-indulgent disrespect of God’s great mercy.  In our wallowing in self-righteousness without any need for confession and repentance, we allow the ways of the world to become our own endorsed ways of the Realm of God.

Too often we become mean-spirited , insensitive, disrespectful, victory-at-all-cost people, possibly viewed as “successful” rather than “blameless and pure”.

Loved Ones, do not slaughter the innocence of the Priest-King Herod once did, do not neglect the purity as Judas Iscariot once did.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz