ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Bernard Lonergan, a remarkable and highly respected Jesuit philosopher and theologian, famously wrote: ‘man achieves authenticity in self-transcendence’. This process of self-transcendence lies at the heart of Paul’s writings in our second reading today. For Paul, the perfection of Christian life and Christian living involves not only ‘living for God’ (v.19b) but wanting and allowing God to reshape every aspect of our lives. Thus he writes, ‘and I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me.’ (v.20) Living in this way is a natural consequence of us choosing Christ and being baptised and Lonergan would add that our vocation now, as baptised Christians, is to be (human) beings being in LOVE – freely and deliberately wanting to be intimately (ontologically) united to Christ, with Christ living in us!
Now we can understand more completely the full significance of “the woman’s” actions in today’s Gospel reading. With intimacy, love and faith, repentance and sorrow, she united herself to Christ and allowed God’s saving love to heal her and give her peace. (See the hymn by St Alphonsus Liguori, trans E Vaughan no 662 v. 2, “I live, no ’tis not I that live; God gives me life, God lives in me”.
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This weekend this country and the Commonwealth are celebrating the Queen’s 90th birthday. Let us congratulate her and wish her peace and God’s Blessing.
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