Memorial of Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Lectionary: 492

For the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ...

 

These verses from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus echo an oft-quoted passage in the Book of the Prophet Micah. The prophet recites the people's sarcastic complaints:

 

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with myriad streams of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my crime,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

 

and then gives the Lord’s response:

You have been told, O mortal, what is good,

and what the LORD requires of you:

Only to do justice and to love goodness,

and to walk humbly with your God.

 

Where Micah says we should do justice, Saint Paul says we say we should live justly; to Micah’s love goodness and walk humbly, he says we should live temperately and devoutly.

And then Saint Paul gives an additional dimension to our life. Where the Old Testament looked for vindication of God's people and the revelation to the nations that they are indeed God's beloved, Saint Paul promised "the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ."

Catholic doctrine understands that the salvation God has promised, for which Jesus died in agony, is more than an acquital. It is not like many frustrated indictments in American courts, where a guilty person is set free for lack of evidence. In our human systems ample amounts of money and clever lawyers can beat any indictment. Even those convicted receive a lighter sentence. 

Standing before the divine justice of God we plead for mercy but we cannot ask God to simply ignore our guilt. That would contradict both God's justice and our human dignity. 

We must be thoroughly purified of sin to stand in God's presence for all eternity. This purification is similar to the healing of a serious wound, except that a severely injured person cannot expect to recover one hundred percent of their strength, flexibility, and functionality. Our healing will enable the lame to fly as we advance from grace to grace. 

In Christ, through Baptism, Eucharist, and our life of prayer in the fellowship of the Church, we ask God to give us a greater innocence than Adam and Eve had in the beginning. We would be, as Saint John Paul II intoned, "totus tuus." (Totally yours!) That totality must include our present, our future, and the past. 

If we are presently ashamed of our sinful history -- and who isn't? -- we wait for God's mercy to heal those memories so that we might see how God -- who never abandoned us -- was always leading us through guilt, shame, and grief to salvation. The horror of Calvary will erupt in the glory of Easter. 

This grace is not a spiritual event; rather it is physical as we experience the Resurrection of the Body. As Job said, 

"I will see for myself, my own eyes, not another’s, will behold him.

Grace must penetrate to the core of our free will, as we are delivered from the self;  from wilfulness to willingness. That sounds like slavery to some people, and the saints -- beginning with Saint Paul -- often use that word to describe our relationship to God. But Jesus insists, 

"I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

The Lord has promised freedom which begins and ends with a freedom to live, and move and have our being in the Spirit of God. On that Day we will realize the fulfillment of his promise: 

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another. John 15:16