by Fr. Jonas Abib
Founder Cancao Nova

"As to death, he died to sin once and for all, as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as [being] dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires."(Romans 6, 10-13).

And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness.

Let us take The Letter to the Romans 6, 10-11. We cannot put our bodies at the service of sin! How dare we to put our procreative organs at the service of the enemy?!

Unfortunately we have been putting the organs of our bodies at the service of impurity only to perform iniquities. Temptation hooks us efficiently and especially at present temptation is using the organs of our bodies to insult God.

The enemy uses you and me, uses our organs, to spit in God’s face. The enemy uses you as a pawn and makes a fool of you; he wants to offend our God then he uses us. That has to come to an end! We cannot go on being “the useful innocent” that the enemy uses as a “punching doll”.

“Present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness” (I Ro 6,13). The parts of my body must be used for the sake of sanctity and my procreative organs must guide me to sanctity. How can I do that? You must resist! You can achieve sanctity through resistance!

Sensuality often sets us on fire and we should resist because that produces an enormous quantity of energy inside us at that moment and reinforces us to have a heroic attitude in life.

We are really self-indulgent softies, though the Lord is always telling us: “Hold on, my son! Hold on, my daughter!” My eyes can resist, my fingertips can resist, I can resist, the members of my body can resist! That is virtue, that is heroism and that leads to sanctity!

During the process of canonization of a new saint, one of the topics that really take a long time is to prove that the future saint had heroic virtues in life. Heroism is the raw material of sanctity. Every time that you are patient, that you resist and withhold you take one more step toward heroism through your patience; how many wives must be patient, how many children, how many fathers?

How big is the number of families that suffer because of a brutal father, families that need to be patient! That patience leads the members of that family to heroic virtue!

I can talk about kindness in the same way I am talking about patience. God is kind! We live in a world full of evil though we should not be evil because we have been created after God’s image. Evil tries to attack you from all sides and transform you into an evil person through rage, rebellion, frustration and thoughts of revenge. We must be heroic and withstand in kindness.

Do not waste that opportunity! You can acquire so many virtues by loving, loving and loving despite any circumstances around you! It is heroic of you to withstand, so if nobody else does it around you, be the one to conquer virtue! Your virtue shall sanctify your life.

The Lord is teaching you the “cat’s jump”. Those things that are martyrdom for you are a martyrdom of sanctification: they will sanctify you.

God’s gift is eternal life: rise to life, my son! Rise to life, my daughter!

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Holy Saturday Homily Preached at the Cancao Nova Community in Brazil by Father Jonas Abib

Contact

Cancao Nova
http://www.cancaonova.net  TX, US
Fr. Jonas Abib - Founder, 817 431-8512

Email

eua@cancaonova.com

Keywords

Sanctity, Temptation, Holiness