22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 - Transformed by the renewal of your mind

 

I’ve shared before how, when I was a teenager, I went through a phase where I was not very interested in our beloved Catholic faith. I had stopped going to church, and became immersed in some real secular ways of thinking. I started to buy into the idea that religion had nothing to offer, that science and politics were the answers to humanity’s problems. I began to read Marx and Freud and was watching a lot of entertainment in which religion, particularly Catholicism was derided and mocked. 

“Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind”. Our age, as you might know, is very antithetical toward religion. Mockery of religion, the bible, the church, the priesthood pervades so much of the media. And it’s relentless. The mockery and contempt for religion is found in so many classrooms, workplaces, political rhetoric, media, pop songs and movies, internet forums. And hearing this preacher, break open this scripture passage from St. Paul late one night, helped me to realize that I had bought right into it: this idea which is still very prevalent that religion was not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

But, the idea that the world can fix itself without God is foolish. Just look at what happens when God is driven out of society, politics, science, not to mention the classroom: you get concentration camps, weapons of mass destruction, torture, human trafficking, mental illness, broken families, crime, and self-destruction through drugs and alcohol.  

When we conform ourselves to the world—we are swallowed by the world and our light dims, our minds are dulled, and our wills are weakened to the point where we just go along with the fallen corrupt human system because it’s easier. 

Rather, the way of Christ is the way of transformation and healing. Which is why in the Gospel when Peter tells Jesus to abandon the cross, Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan, You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Funny how, thinking as “human beings do” always leads away from the cross. 

Why does Jesus call Peter Satan? Because Satan does not want mankind saved. Satan does not want mankind transformed. Satan wants us enslaved while thinking that we are free. Satan is the great enemy: he wants you chained to your sins, trapped in cycles of sin and depravity. He wants you to hate, and resent, and manipulate, and abuse. He wants to see all that is holy in you, all that is a reflection of the goodness of God trampled upon. You wants you using your bodies in degrading ways, he wants your minds atrophied, and your wills broken to give-in to every one of his temptations. Satan loves when we abandon religion for science for politics, when we worship anything but God. 

Satan wants us to settle for fallenness, but God wishes to raise us up, which is why St. Paul says renew your mind that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. 

What does it mean to renew your mind? The Christian is to always be about the business of seeking to know, understand, and interpret the world through the lens of the Word of God. The Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the writings of the saints, must be the interpretive lens, the filter, the hermeneutic, to understand all things, and to shape and guide and inform all of our decisions. And if we arrive at some conclusion contrary to the Gospel—well we have not thought and prayed and studied long enough.

Satan is hard at work, creating division—turning man against brother—Christian against Christian—undermining right religion, frustrating domestic tranquility, spreading terrible confusion—duping even Christians to embrace attitudes and behavior which is repugnant to the word of God. But, as I said a few weeks ago, God chose us to live now, in the year 2023, in the midst of this nearly-all pervasive Satanic spirit—to show the world another way, the way—To show and to witness, to follow and to suffer for the one who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father, except through me.”

The Catholic of 2023 must be a bullwork of right faith, who pursues the true, the good, and the beautiful in opposition to the error, corruption, and ugliness of the world. The Catholic of 2023 must take up the cross and follow Christ—no matter the hostility or pressure from the Satanic spirit. You are chosen for this. You and I were made for this.

We are called to be the great transformers of the world, but we must first let God and his will transform us. Read the Bible. Study the Catechism. In fact, you should study your faith to the highest capacity of your intellect. In other words, if you can grasp high school theology, you should study high school theology. If you can grasp college or graduate level or doctorate level theology, then you should. Our minds have tremendous capacity for the Truth. But if all you do is fill your mind with the garbage on tv and the internet, your life, and mind, and wills, and bodies will suffer for it.

We have a wonderful new Bible Study starting up in a few weeks on Monday nights. But every day, you need to seek the renewal of your mind. Every day learn something new about your faith. I’ve been a priest for 15 years. I have two masters degrees in Theology, a bachelors in philosophy, and I promise you cannot exhaust what there is to learn about God and about our faith. Likely, the thing that is keeping us from the daily renewal God wants for us is laziness and fear of the cross. 

So, in the name of Jesus Christ, rebuke Satan, just like Jesus did in the Gospel today, rebuke any attitude, any fear, any habit, that is keeping you from the renewal and the transformation God wants for you, for therein lies joy, freedom, peace, and the fullness of life for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.