Tag Archives: God

Repent from Your Good Works

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Prodigal Son (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was at a men’s bible study again this evening.  We’re diving deep into the story of the Prodigal Son.

Most people don’t realize, myself included, that the story was really a warning to the people who obey God’s rules diligently: “There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord.  One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.”

Even a man who has violated nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most profligate, immoral person.  Why?  Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son in the parable sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.

Forgetting Sex is Sacred

It’s easy for me to forget that sex is sacred.  Twenty-first century U.S. society has redefined sex: at best, it’s the culmination of a unrequited romantic courtship; at worst, it’s a commodity to be traded, a tool for violence.  The messages that surround me is that sex is a normal biological process, a form of recreation, and a right to happiness that needs to be protected/defended.  I rarely hear that sex is sacred.

I forget that sex is sacred, but I’m reminded of this truth today through the birth of my second daughter.  God, thank you.  You blessed me with an awareness that I pray I can articulate here in this journal entry.

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I love my wife.  She is a saint and she is helping me become one.  In marriage, I learned that self-giving is the inner life of the Trinity.  The self-giving needed to make a marriage work is a mystery to outsiders.  The self-giving in our marriage creates a loving bubble, protecting us from the world.  This loving bubble is a living cell within the Body of Christ.

Similar to the 40 days of Advent leading to Easter, my wife and I prepared for 40 weeks for the birth of our new child.  My wife and I were joined together as “one flesh” through marriage.  Our self-giving to each other is united and led by the love God has for each of us as individuals.  It is because God is forgiving, self-sacrificing and generous to me that I am forgiving, self-sacrificing and generous to my wife.  Our love for each other (wife, husband, God) form a triune body for the Holy Spirit.  The invisible reality of our love is made visible with the birth of another immortal soul: Hana Therese.

The invisible reality of the love between Christ and His Bride (the Church), is made visible through new Baptisms, Confirmations and First Communions.  As Hana takes to her mother’s breast for milk, so I take to the Church’s altar for the Eucharist.  As Maya (Hana’s older sister) has grown these past two years in a loving household, so has my soul grown within the loving household of God’s Church these past three years.

Sex is sacred because “it is the only door by which God himself regularly enters our world to do the miraculous deed he alone can do: creating new images of himself.  Sex images God because it makes new images of God.”

Families are the basic building blocks of Christ’s body, not the individual.  I cannot create immortal souls on my own.  My wife and I cannot create immortal souls together.  Only with God.

If I push you out of the bedroom, God, it’s because I’ve fallen victim to the world’s redefinition of sex as something profane, something vulgar… something I should be ashamed to let you see. Help me accept the presence of the Holy Spirit during sex because the act is sacred. We are creating immortal souls with you.

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