September 10, 2025 // Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Colossians 3:1-3
Reflect on the Word //
While I have been a Christian my entire life, I have at many times questioned God as to why it is so difficult to keep choosing His way. Why does it feel that every area of modern life has complicating factors that push and demean the Commandants of God? Why do such simple-seeming things, like what is being taught in my sixth grade child’s science class and where and how I invest my money, require moral judgment and action from a Christian perspective?
It can be exhausting to live under these “earthly” pressures and tempting to ignore that the entirety of my life is changed because I have, in fact, died with Christ through my Baptism. But the reality is that faith is not a burden, and the call to seek what is above is the crux of the challenge of Christianity. The Christian faith does not call us to ignore or wish away or deny our own inherent failures and sin, but calls us to the clear-eyed recognition that our own choices can lead us away from life with Christ or lead us to live more fully within it.
When I think about Saint Paul writing these words to the Colossians, I wonder if they received his words the way I do, as a bold challenge that allows no wiggle room for excuses within my own conscience. Not only was it a personal challenge to the Colossians, it was calling them to a completely new way of life, a life lived contrary to that of the society around them. Living in societies that embrace what Saint Paul calls the “earthly” has always been part of the Christian life and was especially drastic in his ancient pagan culture. This same universal call to holiness has never changed.
Saint Paul understands that the life of holiness may at times feel hidden, but Christ’s presence with us is constant. We can rely on the grace Jesus gives us through the Sacraments to sustain us as we try to offer our lives to Him every single day.
Relate to the Lord // How will you “seek what is above” today?
Christy Isinger is a cradle Catholic, wife, and mother of five teenagers from western Canada. During the short Canadian summers she tries to garden and grow flowers, while in the long cold winters she reads a lot of books, writes, and homeschools. Her Substack newsletter can be found at christyisinger.substack.com.
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