What does it mean to "renounce the world" according to our Baptismal promise? Here's what Dom Prosper Garranger says. This is taken from The Liturgical Year, volume IV; the meditation for Tuesday of Quinquagesima week:
"The fundamental rule of Christian life is, as almost every page of the Gospel tells us, that we should live out of the world, separate ourselves from the world, hate the world. The beloved disciple cries out to us: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in Him."
When we were baptized and were signed with the glorious and indelible character of Christians, the condition required of us, and accepted, was that we should renounce the works and pomps of the world (which we expressed under the name of Satan); and this solemn baptismal promise we have often renewed. But what is the meaning of our promise to "renounce the world?"
The Apostle also tells us to use this world as though we did not use it. It is not, therefore, forbidden us to live in, and to use, the world. If by the world we mean these visible things around us which God created in his power and goodness; if we mean this outward world, which he made for His own glory and our benefit; it is worthy of its Divine Author, and to us, if we but use it a right, as a ladder whereby our souls may ascend to their God.
Let us gratefully use this world; go through it without making it the object of our hope; not waste upon it that love which God alone deserves; and ever be mindful that we are not made for this, but for another and a happier world.
But the majority of men are not thus prudent in their use of the world. Their hearts are fixed upon it, and not upon Heaven. Hence it was that when the Creator dined to come into this world, in order that He might save it, the world knew Him not. Men were called after the name of the object of their love. They shut their eyes to the light; they became darkness; God calls them "the world."
In this sense, then, the world is everything that is opposed to our Lord Jesus Christ, that refuses to recognize Him, and that resists His divine guidance. Those false maxims would tend to weaken the love of God in our souls; which recommend the vanities that fasten our hearts to this present life; which cry down everything that can raise us above our weaknesses or vices; which decoy and gratify our corrupt nature by dangerous pleasures; which, far from helping us to the attainment of our last end, only mislead us -- all these are "the world."
Sin has come into this exterior world created by God for Himself, and has given the world prominence. Now we must conquer it, and trample upon it, or we shall perish with it. There is no being neutral; we must be its enemies or its slaves."
Prayer from the Ambrosian Liturgy:
"Sweet is this present life, but it passes away; terrible, O Christ, is Thy judgment, and it endures forever. Let us, therefore, cease to love what is unstable and fix our thoughts on the fear of what is eternal, saying: Christ, have mercy upon us!"
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