Reading for Friday, 3rd Week of Lent

Romans 6:1-11

“By that baptism into his death we were buried with him, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might set out on a new life.” (Rom 6:4 – Revised English Bible). We are reminded at every baptism that we “are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.”

The difference between us and Jesus is that He has already entered that new life of resurrection. We have “set out” in that journey, and are on the way. We have even tasted that life, in our Eucharistic fellowship with Jesus and each other. But we are not fully there yet. In a sense, we are dying to sin, day after day. Some days we may know the freedom of being at the disposal of God and a child of grace. Other days, we find ourselves yielding to sin.

In the 17th century, an Anglican clergyman named Jeremy Taylor wrote a long devotion entitled “Holy Dying.” In it, he wrote: “He that by a present and constant holiness secures the present, and makes it useful to his noblest purposes, he turns his condition into his best advantage, by making his unavoidable fate become his necessary religion.”

Death is our unavoidable fate. Our necessary religion is not to shrink from this knowledge but to embrace it, trusting in God’s unfathomable grace. While we are dying, let each of us walk that road, striving to grow in the doing of right and dying to sin, rejoicing when we are at God’s disposal, and trusting in God’s grace when we fall back. And always remember that where we are going, Jesus has already arrived. He is walking with us toward that final destination in Spirit, and his Father will welcome us when we get there.