Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time—Romans 8:9, 11-13

If you’ve been baptized, you’ve already died mystically. That was Saint Paul’s message in last week’s second reading. This week he begins by reminding us of the same truth but with slightly different language: you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit. In the spiritual death of baptism, the Holy Spirit began to live inside of us.

This is what Saint Paul means by the phrase “in the Spirit.” To be in the Spirit is to be in the Body of Christ, to have the Spirit of Christ living in you. The Church is a mystical organism, a living thing. If God’s own Spirit lives inside of you, if you have communion in God’s own Body and Blood, then you really are part of this mystical body. You’re in the Spirit, and therefore everything you do, you do as another Christ, as Jesus’ personal representative. This is why the works of the flesh are so dangerous and result in death: they cut us off from the mystical body and snuff out the Spirit within us.

Today, the Spirit challenges us to “put to death the deeds of the flesh” (8:13). We all, myself included, need to take up our crosses daily and put to death the very deeds that God has forgiven. If you’re like me, you tend to confess the same sins all the time. It’s hard to break the force of habit. But if “the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to my mortal body” (8:11), then I can’t hold on to deeds of the flesh that result in death.

How do I put to death the deeds of the flesh, especially when they are firmly established habits in my life? Traditionally, we call the habitual disposition to sin vice. Its antidote is the habitual disposition to do good, known as virtue. To put to death the deeds of the flesh, we have to recommit to practicing virtue with the help of the Holy Spirit. If we’re going to live in the Spirit, we have to rely on the Spirit. How do you overcome the vice of gluttony, the habitual disposition to eat and drink too much? By practicing the virtue of temperance, the habitual disposition to regulate food and drink. It sounds quite simple: if you habitually regulate food and drink, then you can’t habitually eat or drink too much. It sounds simple, but it’s difficult, even impossible, without the Spirit’s help.

In baptism, we have died mystically and risen to new life in the Spirit. But we often continue to live the old life of the flesh. Today the Spirit challenges us all to embrace the new life by putting to death the works of the flesh. What it the vice you most need to put to death? And which virtue can you commit to asking the Spirit to grow in you?