Sixth Sunday after Pentecost; Octoechos Tone 5; 🕂 Our Venerable Father Athanasius of Athos.
Polyeleos Feast.
Romans 12:6-14; Galatians 5:22-6:2; Matthew 9:1-8; Luke 6:17-23.
Read Romans 12:6-14
The question of how to be authentically ourselves while living with others takes on special importance at various times in our lives. Adolescence is a time of self-expression as we move toward greater independence. In young adulthood, we make choices that are an intersection of what we have learned to value and who we aspire to be. The childrearing years bring questions of how to be ourselves and how to be with others into sharper focus as we face the challenge of teaching and modelling behavior. Retirement creates a time of looking back in reassessment and looking ahead to who we want to be for the rest of our lives. And being elderly can provide us with occasions for distilled expressions of personal character that will resonate in others’ memories.
The activities Paul lists can all be engaged in without any special charism. There are human needs for serving, teaching, exhortation, and giving, and there are human abilities to do them. But there is a unique grace given to us that the apostle affirms in instructing us to have it characterize our doing of these things. We will become both most authentically ourselves and who God is renewing us to be in serving others with grace.
Paul grounds this enjoyment of our gifted uniqueness in sharing life with others. Love has objective contours defined by good and evil. It is to be tangible and observable, providing far more accurate feedback as to whether we are doing it than a subjective self-assessment. It requires that we tend the flame of God’s work in us to keep our service heartfelt. Perseverance is irreplaceable in this, especially that we do not undo our efforts by responding in kind to those who persecute us.