On Being Not So Occupied With Earthly Things

Their end is destruction.
Their God is their stomach;
their glory is in their “shame.”
Their minds are occupied with earthly things.
       St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians 3:19

Happy Second Sunday of Lent!

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul is worried about whom some in their congregation are taking as role models, and he exhorts them to be “imitators of me.”

Imitating Paul is a pretty tall order. He had long been a zealot, first for the law of Moses and then for dumping the law because Christ’s sacrifice had atoned for our sins and set us free of the law. After his conversion, he devoted every ounce of his being to preaching the Good News of Christ Jesus, suffering deprivation, prison and execution. He preached a life of profound generosity to the point of asceticism.

His is a pretty hard model to follow. I have known a few who have followed it and have heard of a few others. Most of us aren’t up to being generous to deprivation.

But we can be generous until it hurts a bit, until we get to the point of making hard choices.

Lent is a good time to think about how we can simplify our lives to give life to others.