The readings from St Paul's letter to the Romans we are hearing these Sundays as the Second Reading are a serious challenge to our lives as Christians in 2020. Imagine what it was like for the people of Rome, who had yet to meet Paul, in the First Century!? He tells us: "My sisters and brothers, you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you." (Rm 8: 9) What an incredible mystery! This is only one sentence from that great letter and yet it points out a great mystery of faith. Do we recognize in our daily lives to the fact that God's Spirit dwells in us? Are we slaves to our appetites and pushed by worldly jealousies and desires? In the end we are dealing in life and death in the choices we make everyday. We need to make the choice for life. The conversion experience is not a one off. Each day, as with marriage, as with priestly ordination, as with religious life, as with the single life, we need to make the choice to respond to the Spirit of God that dwells within us. It is through the sacraments of baptism and reconciliation that we actualize the redemption that is at work within us. Let us therefore choose life and do so in the smallest actions of our everyday life: "So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if you live in the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." (Rm 8: 12-13)
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