Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time—Romans 5:12-15

The past three weeks in the Mass theme have been intense: Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi. This week we return to normal Ordinary Time, the twelfth week of it. This week begins a stretch of second readings from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans that will continue into September, but we pick it up in the fifth chapter of the letter. So let’s review this letter as a whole and the argument being made in the parts that come before our reading this week.

Romans is unique among Saint Paul’s letters in several ways. When Saint Paul wrote this letter around 57 A.D., he did not write to address the problems or questions of a specific community. Rather, he wrote to a community he had not visited before to lay out the basics of his message before he visits. Because of these circumstances, Romans can be said to be Saint Paul’s systematic presentation of what it means to be a Christian. In the first four chapters, he has laid out that God is righteous, human beings are sinful and sometimes even deny that there is a God, and despite all this God still gives us grace and offers us forgiveness through Jesus.

In this week’s second reading, St. Paul begins highlighting the parallels between the fall and redemption, between Adam and Jesus. They are similar because both had a great impact on the world, and both were free choices. But they are different in that Adam’s sin filled the world with evil while Jesus’ redemption freed us from Adam’s sin. In fact, Jesus has more than compensated for Adam’s sin. In a way, Jesus’ redemption is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. The magnitude of redemption far outweighs the magnitude of the fall. In the words of the Exultet sung at the Easter Vigil, “Oh happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer!”

That is precisely the point that the Holy Spirit is reminding us of today. When it comes to grace, the Lord is not a minimalist. He’s not content with just enough grace, just enough redemption, or just enough of you. The Lord wants to give us all of himself, and he wants all of us in return. There is a minimalist approach to Christianity in our culture that seeks the low bar of salvation, just to avoid hell. The Lord has so much more in mind for us because he is a God of abundance, of overflow, of more than enough. He wants to be Lord of your life, of your finances, of your job, your marriage, your free time, your hopes and dreams.

Today, the Holy Spirit is asking each one of us a question. Will you let the Lord be such and so great a Redeemer, or are you only interested in a minimalist salvation? Will you allow the Lord to overflow his grace in your life, are do you want to settle for less?