Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings for Sunday: Sirach, 1 Corinthians, Luke

If an anthropologist from the future, traveling back in time with an invisibility cloak could observe you every day, all day, for months: what type of report would he write? It is easy for us to declare what our ideals are, but talk is cheap. How do we actually live? In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus says, “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit… A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” We all like to think of ourselves as good people, yet, if we are honest, we not only sin but even have thought patterns that are not always good. We judge people, we lust, and we are often selfish and self-centered.

Holiness is not simply avoiding sin; though to be clear, we should not sin. Holiness, in the end, is about conformity to Jesus Christ. It is to become just like him: to be a son or daughter of God in and through the Son of God.

To think like him, be like him, take on his dispositions and, in the end, act like him. That is why the Catholic Church teaches both about what entertainment we “consume” and the inculcation of virtue, that is, good habits.

Regarding entertainment, as well as books and so on, the Church teaches us to choose carefully. We like to think that we have great mental filters, and that we can filter out bad material. But that is not true. After all, have you ever had a song stuck in your head? How did it get there? Virtue is the day in and day out doing of good things, to the point that they become habit. Habits can be good (virtues) or bad (vices). We want to be so like Jesus Christ that it becomes “natural;” we want to be holy.