The Spirit who is from God

In today’s first reading, 1 Cor 2: 10b-16, St. Paul reminds us that “we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.”  One of those free gifts is our liberty. We are free to live a life of the Spirit and follow God’s will or a life of self-indulgence, following our own will apart from our Creator’s plan for us.  God does not coerce us to do His will. St. Paul in Galatians chapter 5 addresses Christian liberty and states tha  each one  of us is called to be free, not to be a slave of sin.  When I am following the Spirit of the Lord, I will experience “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self control” (Gal 5: 22-23).  On the other hand, when I follow the spirit of the world and indulge myself under the guise of freedom, the results of such choices will be “…sexual vice, impurity, and sensuality, the worship of false gods and sorcery; antagonisms and rivalry, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels, disagreements, factions and malice, drunkenness, orgies and all such things” (Gal 5: 18-21). The Law of the Spirit, St. Paul emphasizes, can be summed up in one commandment: “You must love your neighbor as yourself. If you go on snapping at one another and tearing one another to pieces, take care: you will be eaten up by one another.”

 What a message as we go through the campaign experiences and listen to the rancor of the political parties attacking one another. However, Paul’s message also hits close to home:  am I building the community of the church, the community of my own family, the community I live in as a religious? Or am I snapping at others, tearing others to pieces?  In short, which spirit am I following: that of the world or that of God?