 |
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati Main Page || The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index |
Live
Letters Fourteenth Sunday
in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
July 7, 2000In this final section of Second Corinthians (chapters 10-13) Paul returns to the same concerns he had addressed in the beginning of the letter: tensions between himself and the Corinthians, the accusations of his critics, and the nature of his ministry. However, the difference in tone between these chapters and chapters 1-7 cause many scholars to think that chapters 10-13 originally constituted a separate letter.
The pretensions of his critics (whom he refers to as "superapostles") and their questions about his credentials elicit a strong, indeed a passionate response from Paul. Any title to distinction they might have also applies to him. He has worked signs and wonders even as they claim to have done. His efforts and sufferings in proclaiming the gospel surpass anything that they might boast of. He is as good as or better than any of them! He has even had revelations from God which are beyond the power of human words to describe. Nobody has more claim to respect than Paul!
Yet the important thing is not what the minister can claim for himself, but what God does through the minister. Here we arrive at this Sunday’s reading. After the extended account of his sufferings and distinctions in the service of the gospel, Paul now speaks of another element in his life. In order to keep him from the pride that might have arisen from all these spectacular features of his apostolate, God sent him something to remind him of his weakness. We don’t know what this affliction was - whether it was physical or psychological or connected with his relationships with other people - but it seems clear that it was something that Paul found embarrassing and hard to deal with, an instrument of the devil impeding his work. He prayed insistently, like Jesus in Gethsemane, that it be taken away, but God gave him to understand that He, God, could get His work done even with an imperfect instrument. The strength of Christ can work and indeed does work most effectively through human weakness. The bottom line is that human weakness is more important in Paul’s apostolate than human strength, because it is in human weakness that the power of Christ is most clearly manifested. Paul is proud of his weakness and vulnerability because it is a vehicle for the strength of Christ.
What does all this mean for us? For one thing, it means that we don’t have to be perfect for God to be able to use us for His providential purposes. Sometimes people hang back from offering themselves to God for His use. They don’t see how God could possibly make anything of them for His purposes. They are too limited, too imperfect. As a result, their marriage, their family, their work, their friendships, the use of their leisure time are without a dimension of godliness that could easily be part of their lives if they were willing to accept their own limitations and rely on God’s ability to work through their weakness.
There is a flip side to this lesson. Often when people are aware of their own quite real talents and abilities, they tend to rely on them alone, to the extent that there is no room for the power of Christ in what they do. An awareness of dependence and vulnerability is a necessary condition for Christ’s action in and through our lives.
Another lesson that Paul’s experience offers us is that we shouldn’t look for perfection from those who minister to us in the Church today. Lay ministers and deacons and priests and bishops are all weak and limited. They - we - may not have some definite and specific disability as Paul seems to have had, but none of them is without faults, none of them limitlessly talented for every aspect of their ministry. Some of them find it hard to reach out to those they are supposed to serve. Some seem to have very little sense of practicality. Some do not seem to be particularly intelligent. Obviously they all try to make themselves as useful to the Lord as they can by developing the capabilities that God has given them. But none of them is totally successful. Each and every one is open to criticism. Yet they are not, for that reason, useless ministers of the gospel since, as Paul has taught us, the real source of life and vigor in the Church is not the human qualifications of the minister, but the power of Christ working through human weakness.
This Sunday’s passage is a reprise of what Paul had to say in chapter 4 of Second Corinthians. The treasures of Christ are distributed in earthen vessels. Here again we see God the virtuoso, performing skillfully on flawed instruments.
This reading brings us to the end of the Church’s liturgical presentation of Second Corinthians. In it we have seen a great apostle at work, trying to deal with the tensions that had arisen between him and his people, reflecting aloud on the nature and implications of his ministry, defending himself against criticism, guiding his hearers to an awareness of the needs of the larger Church and of the meaning of their own generosity. In the process we have gotten to know Paul better. We have greater reason to thank the Lord for His Church and His apostles.
###
Conversation Questions
Is there some weakness in my life that keeps me aware of my vulnerability and my dependence on the Lord?
How does God’s power work through my limitations?
###
Main Page
|| The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index
Copyright © 2000 Archdiocese of Cincinnati.