A reflection on Romans 12:1-2
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
©️2023 Gloria M. Chang
I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2
Eye of the Heart
In the midst of this passing aión (“age,” “world”), the Spirit reigns within, enthroned in the nous (“mind”)—the “eye of the soul (or heart).” Human experience may seem fragmented and dispersed in spacetime, but in our center, God’s eternal presence transcends vicissitudes.
Endowed with the capacity for God (capax Dei), the inSpirited person lives in the world but not of it. Through the renewal of our minds, we awaken to the indwelling Spirit guiding us to union and communion in the Blessed Trinity.
Defying the matter-denigrating dualisms of Hellenistic culture, Paul exhorts Christians to offer their bodies as a “living sacrifice” to God. The adjective “living” (derived from zóé, “life in God”) leads ultimately to the deification of the whole person (body, soul, and spirit) in the Body of Christ. As God fills the nous, the eye of the heart, Divine Light suffuses even the body, as Peter, James, and John witnessed at the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain.
While ages ebb and flow, God fills the mind
And body, deifying humankind.
Traditional Chinese Translation
《被神充滿》
當歲月潮起潮落，神充滿心靈
以及身體，神化人類。