The Eighth Sunday after Trinity

The homily teaches that the Christian life follows the pattern of Christ’s death and resurrection: we must die to sin in order to live in Christ. Drawing from St. Paul’s command to “mortify the deeds of the body,” it explains that baptism gives us new life but does not immediately remove our sinful desires, so Christians must continually battle against the flesh through the power of the Holy Spirit. This requires decisively putting sinful desires and actions to death rather than tolerating them. The homily highlights three important means by which the Spirit strengthens us in this struggle: prayer, reading and meditating on Scripture, and gathering for worship and receiving the means of grace, especially confession, absolution, preaching, and Holy Communion. The Christian life is therefore a lifelong process of dying to sinful affections and allowing the Holy Spirit to cultivate righteousness, so that what belongs to the Spirit may “live and grow” in us.