Lesson 33 - Heavenly Father, Give Us New Life

(Lesson 33)

Third Scrutiny – Heavenly Father, Give Us New Life

”Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation…” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Discussion Guide:

If the process of conversion is truly successful, it will result in the creation of a new life centered on Jesus Christ. Every human being, regardless of circumstance, is capable of responding to the love of God. The Father is able to resurrect a broken spirit, a selfish disposition, or a joyless existence into one of purpose, love, and fulfillment. In other words, he can bring the dead back to life. As Jesus said in the parable of the prodigal son, “Your brother was dead, but now he is alive” (Luke 15:32). God is able to breathe new life into the soul by speaking through his Eternal Word.

Filled with the desire to love and serve Jesus Christ, we become soldiers in the army of God! We use the weapons of faith, hope, and charity to win battles against evil and to spread the good news of salvation. Our Heavenly Father lifts us up and carries us on his shoulders. From this vantage point, we can begin to see things from a new perspective. We see the value of every human life and break down the walls that keep us from loving and forgiving our neighbor.

This new life within the soul bears fruit on earth in personal righteousness and true holiness. It is filled with power from on high that enables us to cope with any situation that we may encounter. The old self decreases as the Lord Jesus Christ increases within us. The more we imitate Jesus, the more we shed the negative aspects of our personalities that tend to lead us into sin. Jesus wants to take over every aspect of our lives. If we have faith in Jesus and seek to obey his commandments, the Holy Spirit will sweep clean all the dust from our past. We will truly be born again in the spirit and confirmed in the truth. At times, we can all be hardheaded and resist the grace of the Lord. As long as we do not completely shut God out, he will continue to work on our souls from within. God can mold us like clay, or chip away at us like marble; it depends on our disposition.

Discussion Points:

· Conversion consists of living a new life in Christ

· Becoming more Christ-like is evidence of this new life

· Dying to sin and rising to holiness should be our goal

· Everything we do must be viewed in the light of the gospel

· Self-centered behavior must change into Christ-centered behavior

· Our old ways must decrease and we must let Jesus have free reign in our hearts

· Through the sacraments, people receive the new life of Christ (CCC 1420)

· The more we cooperate with grace, the more fruit we will bear

· The way we act in our everyday lives should reflect our faith in Jesus Christ

Romans Chapter 6

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Third Scrutiny – Heavenly Father, Give Us New Life

”Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation…” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Opening Prayer:

A Morning Prayer composed by St. Therese of Lisieux:

O my God! I offer Thee all my actions of this day for the intentions and for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I desire to sanctify every beat of my heart, my every thought, my simplest works, by uniting them to Its infinite merits; and I wish to make reparation for my sins by casting them into the furnace of Its Merciful Love.
O my God! I ask of Thee for myself and for those whom I hold dear, the grace to fulfill perfectly Thy Holy Will, to accept for love of Thee the joys and sorrows of this passing life, so that we may one day be united together in heaven for all Eternity. Amen.

Theme:

The Father will raise us up to begin a new life centered on Jesus Christ. The more we die to selfishness and sin, the more we live for God. Our new life in Christ must advance the Kingdom of God on earth through good works and evangelization.

Bible Reading:

John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45 So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it." Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go into Judea again." Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.", he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him;

Explanation of the Bible reading: Lazarus was the brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany. They were all beloved friends of Jesus. Out of compassion, at the request of the two sisters, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Many of the Jews believed in Jesus at the sight of this miracle. As a result of this, the chief priests sought to put Jesus to death (John 11:53), as well as Lazarus (John 12:10). When Jesus raises a believer to new life, he or she will attract people to the Catholic faith. Unfortunately, just like at the time of Jesus, there are those today who will mock and persecute new believers in spite of the positive changes in their lives. In reality, they are mocking the Holy Spirit! The raising of Lazarus demonstrates the power that Jesus has over life and death. In addition to being a real, historical event, it is also a sign of our future bodily resurrection. Christ conquered both physical and spiritual death while providing the world with one more proof of his divine nature. He also demonstrates his human nature by weeping over the death of his friend. How much more must he weep over the spiritual death of an unrepentant sinner?

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

298 Since God could create everything out of nothing, he can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them, and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection. God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." And since God was able to make light shine in darkness by his Word, he can also give the light of faith to those who do not yet know him.

1420 Through the sacraments of Christian initiation, man receives the new life of Christ. Now we carry this life "in earthen vessels," and it remains "hidden with Christ in God." We are still in our "earthly tent," subject to suffering, illness, and death. This new life as a child of God can be weakened and even lost by sin.

1426 Conversion to Christ, the new birth of Baptism, the gift of the Holy Spirit and the Body and Blood of Christ received as food have made us "holy and without blemish," just as the Church herself, the Bride of Christ, is "holy and without blemish." Nevertheless the new life received in Christian initiation has not abolished the frailty and weakness of human nature, nor the inclination to sin that tradition calls concupiscence, which remains in the baptized such that with the help of the grace of Christ they may prove themselves in the struggle of Christian life. This is the struggle of conversion directed toward holiness and eternal life to which the Lord never ceases to call us.

1430 Jesus' call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, "sackcloth and ashes," fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.

1715 He who believes in Christ has new life in the Holy Spirit. The moral life, increased and brought to maturity in grace, is to reach its fulfillment in the glory of heaven.

654 ….. Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life. This new life is above all justification that reinstates us in God's grace, "so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." Justification consists in both victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation in grace. It brings about filial adoption so that men become Christ's brethren, as Jesus himself called his disciples after his Resurrection: "Go and tell my brethren." We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection.

Reflection Questions:

Is there anything you must change in order to live out your “new life in Christ”?








What areas of your life have been “resurrected” by your relationship with Jesus?








How have your friends and relatives reacted to your conversion experience?


Veritatis Splendor

Encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II

19. … It is Jesus himself who takes the initiative and calls people to follow him. His call is addressed first to those to whom he entrusts a particular mission, beginning with the Twelve; but it is also clear that every believer is called to be a follower of Christ…
This is not a matter only of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment. More radically, it involves holding fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. By responding in faith and following the one who is Incarnate Wisdom, the disciple of Jesus truly becomes a disciple of God (cf. Jn 6:45)….
20. Jesus asks us to follow him and to imitate him along the path of love, a love which gives itself completely to the brethren out of love for God: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12)…..Jesus' way of acting and his words, his deeds and his precepts constitute the moral rule of Christian life. Indeed, his actions, and in particular his Passion and Death on the Cross, are the living revelation of his love for the Father and for others. This is exactly the love that Jesus wishes to be imitated by all who follow him. It is the "new" commandment: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:34-35)…..
21. Following Christ is not an outward imitation, since it touches man at the very depths of his being. Being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to him who became a servant even to giving himself on the Cross (cf. Phil 2:5-8). Christ dwells by faith in the heart of the believer (cf. Eph 3:17), and thus the disciple is conformed to the Lord. This is the effect of grace, of the active presence of the Holy Spirit in us.
Having become one with Christ, the Christian becomes a member of his Body, which is the Church (cf. Cor 12:13, 27). By the work of the Spirit, Baptism radically configures the faithful to Christ in the Paschal Mystery of death and resurrection; it "clothes him" in Christ (cf. Gal 3:27): "Let us rejoice and give thanks", exclaims Saint Augustine speaking to the baptized, "for we have become not only Christians, but Christ (...). Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ!" Having died to sin, those who are baptized receive new life (cf. Rom 6:3-11): alive for God in Christ Jesus, they are called to walk by the Spirit and to manifest the Spirit's fruits in their lives (cf. Gal 5:16-25). Sharing in the Eucharist, the sacrament of the New Covenant (cf. 1 Cor 11:23-29), is the culmination of our assimilation to Christ, the source of "eternal life" (cf. Jn 6:51-58), the source and power of that complete gift of self, which Jesus - according to the testimony handed on by Paul - commands us to commemorate in liturgy and in life: "As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor 11:26).