Friday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 25, 2025

Romans 7, 18-25

I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Few passages in Scripture speak so directly to the inner drama of the human soul as this one from Saint Paul. We find here not abstract theology, but the confession of a man who knows the terrain of the heart — the divided will, the longing for holiness, and the grief of repeatedly falling short. Paul puts into words the struggle every sincere believer feels: the conflict between the mind enlightened by grace and the flesh still chained to sin.

“I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.” Paul does not deny the goodness of creation or of the body itself. He is not speaking of the body as God made it, but of the fallen nature that clings to him like a shadow. The “flesh” is that disordered tendency within us which resists God, the gravitational pull of self that bends our desires inward. It is not simply weakness—it is rebellion woven into weakness. And Paul’s lament is universal: “The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.” Every soul that has ever resolved to pray more faithfully, to be patient, to resist temptation, knows this frustration. The will aspires heavenward, but the hand falters.

Paul describes this inner war not as theoretical but as a lived captivity: “I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin.” The “law of the mind” is that inner consent to the truth of God, the recognition that his commandments are good and life-giving. The “law of sin” is the relentless counter-law that urges us to act otherwise, to serve ourselves, to grasp, to excuse. We know what we ought to do, and we even want to do it — but we find ourselves divided. The tragedy is not ignorance; it is impotence.

Paul’s cry, “Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” is not despair, but realism. He looks without illusion at his condition. There is a moment in the spiritual life when we stop pretending that we can perfect ourselves through willpower, that we can domesticate sin through discipline alone. That is when grace begins to work most deeply. The cry of “Who will deliver me?” is the first clear note of humility—the acknowledgment that only divine mercy can reach the roots of our disorder.

And so Paul’s lament bursts suddenly into thanksgiving: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The answer to his question is not an argument but a person. Christ enters the human struggle not as an observer but as the Redeemer who assumes our weakness and conquers it from within. On the cross, He takes upon himself the very conflict Paul describes — the meeting of divine obedience and human frailty—and transforms it into victory.

Through baptism, believers are joined to this mystery. The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, empowering what the flesh could never achieve on its own. The Christian life does not eliminate struggle, but reorients it: we fight no longer as slaves of sin, but as children of grace. The war within continues, yet the outcome is assured. The mind renewed by Christ learns to govern the passions not by fear but by love.

Saint Augustine, meditating on this passage, saw in it the mirror of his own conversion. The more he strove to will the good by his own strength, the more he found himself enslaved. Only when he surrendered to grace did he discover true freedom—the freedom to love.

Paul’s confession thus becomes our own. We recognize in his words the pattern of our days: the tension between the law of sin and the law of grace, the frustration of failure, the unquenchable hope that Christ will not abandon the work he has begun in us.

So long as we remain in this mortal body, the conflict endures. But in every struggle there sounds the echo of that final thanksgiving: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”