Tuesday

Twenty-Third Week

Ordinary Time

1 Cor 2: 10b-16

Luke 4:31-37

Path to Holiness

In today's first reading Paul's words are an effort to teach what it is that enables a believer to be a truly spiritual person.  To begin we must understand or accept the fact that a personal spirituality grows in a properly motivated person's life through the desire to live a good life and to be open to the graces offered by and through the Holy Spirit.  Note Paul's insight:  "... the depths of God can only be known by the Spirit of God."  Because of this gift of knowing the depths of God, the Holy Spirit can fully reveal what it is that  God wants for each person who seeking to know the will of God.

It seems reasonable to believe that some folks, seeking to know the depths of their own being, have to first know the love of God showered upon humankind.  Indeed, a truly spiritual believer is free from the world's efforts to distract that he/she does understand the gifts of the Spirit.

Among the challenges put before us each day is to separate movements of the Spirit from the distractions of the world so that we can discern the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit.  Paul teaches that it is not necessarily the quantity of accumulated knowledge that opens the person to God and a genuine spirituality.  It is, rather, the ability to discern when and how the Holy Spirit is offering us a moment of spiritual purpose in our lives.  The challenge, then, is to be able to recognize the Holy Spirit moments.  Ours must be an effort of "hear" the Holy Spirit speaking to us in whatever manner a "grace" is presented to the human heart.  As the depths of a person's awareness of him/herself deepens, there comes the gift or talent of understanding that special presence in the moment when grace is offered to us.