From Junk Food to Junk Life – Changing Course through the Holy Spirit
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21
In our world today, everything is up for sale and everything is up for grabs, including human lives, and it is fast grabbing the human soul too. The power that rules the world is money, not even religion is free from its shackles. To be on sale is to have a dollar sign attached to everything. In fact, everyone is a potential seller and buyer, it just depends on what commodity is in question. Better still, trade by barter is back – everything is exchangeable for something else.
Human beings mortgage their health for instant gratifications on cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, etc., but in the long term diseases and cancer will come; to choose to consume those substances is to predispose oneself to contracting those diseases. Fast foods and GMO foods are on the increase, but they all get clearance by our governments because of financial rewards, and by ourselves because we freely accept them. Legalization of euthanasia, suicide, abortion, same-sex marriages/unions, eugenics, etc. are affirmations of death sentences on life and living. Sex-education and sexual promiscuity go together, because there is no statistic that proves moral rectitude comes from sex-education, rather the legalization of prostitution, sex-slavery, sex-addiction, rapes and incests are on the increase.
From junk food, that is, our inordinate desire for unhealthy material food, we advance to junk life, a life without aspiration to moral rectitude and God. “From junk food to junk life” is possible because human beings enjoy free-will. Human volition determines the choices we make, for good or ill, for God or against God, for eternal life or damnation. In this situation of free-will and junk life, there is need for the purification of the human will. The Holy Spirit alone can possess and take control of the human will in order to free it from a junk life!
The good news is that the Holy Spirit is not up for sale, maybe because he is invisible and beyond the domain of capitalists, economists, governments and individuals. The domain of the Holy Spirit is that of immortality, that which cannot die. Therefore, to say that “everything is up for sale and everything up for grabs” limits itself to everything material and countable. To say that “human lives” and “human souls” are on track to be grabbed is to say that whatever happens on the material level has impact on the spiritual level, but the Holy Spirit is above both the soul and the body, although its influences can be felt in and by them.
There is only one way to be out of the market created and run by economists and money launderers – possession of the Holy Spirit. According to today’s gospel, “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him,” is the solution to a junk life. What fuels the world of today and places everything on sale is the spirit of lies and falsehood; a spirit of denial that there is more to live than what meets the eye; a false belief that human beings are in-charge of their own destinies, and that others could be used as pawns for the benefit of others; the belief that there are no absolutes, that there is no God. Today, Jesus leaves his disciples with the promise of the Spirit of Truth, the only guarantor of the Truth. If we accept that the “Truth” is one, immutable and universal, then the Holy Spirit alone can purify and unify the wills of human beings and attune them to God’s plan for human destiny.
This is the purification of human will – to live as God has ordained. In this connection, here is what today’s gospel says: “Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” It is precisely because Jesus lives that the Christian lives – “Because I live, you also will live” ; to live otherwise is to live on the standards of the world and not of God. Those who live on the dictates of the world are those who cannot see God, in contradistinction with those who see God because they live for God and with God – “the world will see me no more, but you will see me.”
The “purification of the will” or human conformity to the will of God needs and demands conscious efforts. According to our second reading, rationality is required in order to purify the human will – “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” The ability to consciously turn away from the standards put in place by the world and to accept that of God presupposes choice making, choosing God against the world. Those who do so are those who love God and keep his commandments – “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me,” says Jesus in today’s gospel. Just as this turning away from the standards of the world and embracing the ways and commandments of God is possible on an individual level, so is it possible in a communal level too.
Now, the precondition for sending Peter and John to Samaria, in our first reading, was the good news that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God. That is to say, the option of belonging either to the world or God was presented to them and they opted for God. As a proof of this choice, miracles were taken place among them. In order to confirm their identities as those who belong to God, and to strengthen their wills to remain faithful to God, Peter and John went to them, so that they me receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit became that strength they needed to remain steadfast in their chosen vocation – the Christian vocation. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they became preachers of the faith they received and exemplary Christians.
Today, it is your turn and mine to make a choice between God’s standards and human’s; to either welcome the faith as the Samaritans did, and be given the Holy Spirit or remain living a junk life. At least, the option is open before us, and our wills are ours and to be used as we deem fit. May we make a choice for God today, and not against him!
Assignment for the Week:
Try to pray the chaplet of the Holy Spirit this week.
Thanks so much Fr. Ayo. Remain blessed. There are a lot of insights in this homily.