Initiation Rituals and Transcendence into Adulthood

Friends, today in our second reading, St. Paul says, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.” In many ways, the whole Bible, the whole of revelation, is summed up in this statement. Yet everything in our culture militates against this: it’s all about your life, your choice, finding your voice, asserting your prerogatives. When we live in this little world, we remain stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence; when we live for the Lord, we enter into the adventure of being truly human.