Sixteenth Sunday in Course 2025
Let’s begin with a question that I believe every follower of Christ should ask, early or late in our discipleship: Am I proud to be a Christian?
What does that even mean? “Proud to be a Christian.” We feel pride in our own accomplishments, that is the good ones. We feel an improvement in our self-esteem when we have done something right and beneficial to self or family. That’s not a bad thing. Feelings should not be judged; what must be judged would be the actions that follow the good feeling. And St. Paul and a consecrated monk named Bernard, who lived in the twelfth century, can help us with that judgement. The problem is that the wrong kind of pride is what we know as a capital sin, and we definitely want to avoid that.
The biggest problem with pride is that it’s based on an incorrect assumption—that we can take pride in our accomplishment. That’s particularly true in matters of the spirit. St. Paul asks the Church of Corinth: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” God’s grace given through the action of the Holy Spirit is the source of any good thought, word or action I might try to take credit for. We must rethink our whole approach to the Christian life in the light of that reality.
Saul was a very, very good Jew. He saw the emerging Church in the months after the first Pentecost as a threat on multiple levels. The followers of “the Way” were Jewish heretics, blasphemers who addressed the dead Galilean as if He were divine. He felt it a duty, a mitzvah, to convert or punish all of these followers. Having done this in Jerusalem, he obtained a warrant from the Sanhedrin to destroy the disciples in Damascus. That road to Syria became a path he would never forget, and the experience became the basis for his theology of Church. Jesus appeared to Saul in glory, addressed him by name, and asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute ME.” Jesus was showing Himself to be a divine person and declaring His disciples to be identical with Himself, very much like members of His mystical body. Not long after, Saul was baptized, now referred to as Paulus—Paul. Look at today’s reading from his letter to the Church in Colossae, over in Anatolia.
Paul rejoices in his sufferings, which by this time in his life included beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, and multiple ejections from synagogues and cities. He writes, “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” Now get real. What is lacking in the afflictions of Christ? Didn’t His passion, death, resurrection and ascension to heaven suffice for salvation of the whole human race? Yes. But those of us who are members of Christ’s Body on earth suffer as Christ, and that’s what is lacking. Our sufferings in union with Christ, our Head, parallel His own and because they are Christ’s, they have infinite value for the Church. This is the mystery that we live out, day after day, with all the people whose faith links them to us in the Church. Christ is in us, and we are in Christ. In that mystery we have hope for our eventual glorification when our transformation is complete.
Bringing more and more unbelievers, or, in today’s parlance, “nones” into Christ’s mystical body is our vocation, just as it was the vocation of Mary and Martha and the apostles and all who sat at the feet of Jesus and learned about the kingdom. Each of us is schooled by Christ and the Church to do that with our lives. It’s way more important than making a big banquet, the kind of feast Martha seemed to want to prepare. Only one thing is needed, and that’s our attachment to Christ and His mission to mankind.
All this began in the Judean desert about three thousand years before, when the Blessed Trinity, following the covenant cut with Abraham and Sarah some time earlier, stopped by their tent and enjoyed their hospitality. A simple steak dinner was followed by a promise to the ancient patriarchs, long past any natural chance of childbearing. God would be back in a year, and Sarah would have the son they both had prayed for during a sad century of disappointment. And Jesus, God and man, would ultimately be the descendant who would make it all right.
