What the Lord asks of you..

From today's readings (via Universalis), this from Micah 6:1 - 8:

What is good has been explained to you, man; this is what the Lord asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.

To this, the accused may ask "will this save me from guilt, atone for 'what I have done wrong'?" Our hearts are in the wrong place if we focus only on what releases us from legal liability -- if a sign is all we want. What the Lord asks of us is as the prophet Micah tells us above. As the Gospel reading tells us (from Matthew 12:38 - 42), we must not focus on signs. Our Lord, God-with-us, came to us, preaching more than Jonah did, with wisdom more than Solomon had -- our hearts should be set on Christ. "What is good has been explained" to us by Christ, and with his authority, by His apostles. It isn't all about how we may save ourselves from the wages of sin. That is the beginning, an initiation, to be made clean, washed white as snow by the blood of the Lamb. There is much more than this in the will of God for us. For our Heavenly Father, in His love and mercy, wills for nothing less than eternal happiness and holiness for his children. We are redeemed through Christ's sacrifice, but He also sanctifies us, His spirit makes a home in our bodies, enabling us to do "what is good" and making us grow in holiness -- sharers of his divine nature (CCC 51).

In the recent Superman movie, Luthor rages against "gods" like Superman, who don't share. Well, our God shares everything with us, including His holiness. Not content with bringing us to the minimum level of holiness, which would be at the point when all sin has been washed away in us, His spirit makes a home in us, inviting us at every occasion to grow in holiness, so that there is no place left for sin to grow in us.