Fourteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, Year B: Country Music, I Aint Leaving You, Thorn

Country music often tells stories about real life problems, thus the joke, “What do you get when you play country music backward?” You get back your wife, your dog, and your truck.

One song tells about a man taking his beloved wife, whom he truly loves, to his 10th High School reunion, where he saw his old girlfriend whom he once had really wanted to marry. In fact, back in high school, he used to pray: "Lord, I ask only one thing of you...help me win the heart of this girl." Then comes the refrain of that country music song: "Thank God for unanswered prayers."1

St. Paul was glad for his unanswered prayers too. In our Second Reading we hear that he had a thorn in the flesh, and that three times he begged the Lord that this would leave him, but the Lord said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Instead of asking God to fix the circumstances that you can’t change, ask God to reveal Himself in your circumstances.

We hear that the purpose of the thorn was to prevent personal pride and self-sufficiency, and to increase one’s sense of dependence on God’s grace and God’s power alone for our sanctification and eternal glory.

In fact, this ‘thorn in the flesh’ happened soon after St. Paul was in the third heaven since Paul says that the purpose of the thorn was to keep him “from being too elated.” 2 Corinthians 12:7

Being caught up to the third heaven and the receiving of a subsequent thorn is relevant, because the multiple spiritual realms in heaven really means that “heaven is not a single state in which all saints and angels are equal and all people receive the same reward. It’s more complex than that.”2

For our purposes, it is sufficient to know that, in heaven, God gives each and every person his fulfilment in a way peculiar to this or that individual, depending on how they responded to God’s grace while on earth which does relate to one’s own particular thorn.

What kind of thorn was it for St. Paul? Maybe shingles or bacterial reddening of the skin by inflammation. The thorn in the flesh was definitely not a sinful activity or a habit. The thorn in the flesh is something you can’t change, you have no control over, and it’s not going away.

Although Paul implies, through the divine passive grammatical tense, that God gave the thorn to him, at the same time he attributes this thorn to the work of Satan, which means that Satan unknowingly accomplishes God’s will by Paul’s thorn.

Application:

The same pain or thorn, which is a permanent circumstance, something emotional or physical,… it can drive some people away from God, while it also draws other people closer to God. The people who are drawn closer to God understand that the thorn is for their benefit.

If a person decides he’s going to do what he wants to do, he will end up seeing the day when he will have done what he never wanted to do.3 The thorn protects you from making bigger mistakes because thorns can give one a special sensitivity to God.

Whatever this thorn was, Paul was grateful for it because it ensured him that God is and would forever help him to remain humble and be dependent on God.

“Power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

The verse is not saying that weakness is power but rather since the apostolic agent is Christ, weaknesses disclose the power of Christ. It’s the effective working of the power of our crucified Lord in Paul’s ministry.

After all, Jesus wore a crown of thorns. And today in our Gospel, in what is called the “rejection narrative,” he is rejected in his hometown of Nazareth. They call God a carpenter. They can’t get past his humanness by those who knew him best. He is a rejected prophet, which is nothing unusual.

“So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.” Mark 6:5

There is grace in learning how to fail. We don't need an instant "out" from every problem.

The people, we hear also in our First Reading from Ezekiel, chapter 2, are “hard of face and obstinate of heart”- a face that shows no emotion when it should. Obstinate of heart—incapable of receiving impressions, like Pharaoh’s stubbornness in Exodus 7:3

Our First Reading says: For they are a rebellious house (Isaiah 1:4 “sinful nation”).

“What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know.... The one that's red and has thorns.