dominicosRomans 8, 12-17
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We are not debtors to the flesh. If you live by the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit, you make the disorders of the sinful man die, you will live
Paul has presented to us salvation in Jesus Christ as a "liberation" from death, from sin and from the Law. But it is a "liberation" that we have to continue completing continuously. Here we find the habitual comparison of Saint Paul between the "flesh" and the "spirit".
The flesh, for Saint Paul, is not principally the human body, it is the "entire man when he has moved away from the sight of God".
Resuming, in general terms, each time we find the word "flesh" in the texts of Saint Paul, we could substitute it for "man without God".
The spirit is precisely the contrary, it is not just the soul, it is the entire man when moved by God.
All those that allow themselves to be lead by the Spirit of God, these are "Sons of God".
"Allow oneself to be led" . "Allow oneself to be led". By God! Here is what totally replaces the Law. Here is what kills any attitude excessively moralizing, even that of "man without God" for whom the only ideal, understandably, consists in avoiding evil and doing good. For the Christian, there is no longer the Law, it is enough to "let oneself be led by the Spirit of God". It is an immense simplification of morality! But this is not easy. In no way. It is never ending. It changes from the "rules", with which we can "be justified" when they are obeyed- and this. a love for Someone, with which it is always possible to advance further.
The Spirit that you have received does not make you "slaves" full of fear. It is a Spirit that makes you "sons".
To pass to filial sentiments towards God. Exile fear. Not with the spirit of slavery, but with the spirit of children, of adoption. The word "adoption" can help us to reflect. In the case of the adoption of a child, Jewish tradition speaks of "the child of his kindness", the word underlines the aspect of a chosen one, the choice of love, of the one that adopts a child. Lord, that is how you love us, as a mother loves her child.
Lord, that is how you expect from us affection, not fear. Help us to never consider our Christian life and the renouncements that it entails, as the chains dragged along by a slave. You expect from us the joyful decision of a fee man, of a child who is happy to obey his much loved parents. A man who would only obey through fear is of no interest to you Lord.
Moved by the Spirit, we cry out to the Father calling him: Abba, "Father".
That Hebrew form purposefully used by Saint Paul, is the word familiarly used by small Jewish children in the epoch: "Papa". That form was never used in the Bible, nor in the Jewish religious vocabulary; it is an invention of Jesus! He was the first one to dared to use this familiar and loving term to speak of God. It is the word used at the beginning of the Lord's Prayer. We should pause at this word. Repeat it endlessly. Just this name can "feed" a whole prayer. That is what Saint Theresa of Jesus used to do.
The same Holy Spirit unites with our "spirit" to tell us that we are his children, his heirs.
Experience of the mystical presence of the Spirit in our spirit.
Say your final prayers.