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Letters Sixteenth Sunday
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The Catholic Telegraph
July 20, 2001Paul has opened the main section of his letter to the Colossians with a symphonic proclamation of Christ’s role in creation and redemption. He then reminds the Colossians that they have benefitted from Christ’s action by means of their faith, a faith of which he, Paul, was a minister.
In this Sunday’s reading, Paul continues to present his credentials, gently persuading these new Christians to pay attention to what he has to say, even though he is not personally known to them.
This passage is quite rich in content, but rather rambling, each clause leading into the next in a way that is not conducive to clarity and easy understanding. If the same ideas were to be presented in the kind of written expression that we are used to, it would probably read something like this:
"I am a minister of the Church, and have been called by God to this service. The purpose of my calling is to bring people like yourselves to the full holiness that God offers them. This is not an easy task. My ministry costs me suffering, but my suffering extends the meritorious self-giving of Christ and strengthens the Church. I deal with God’s mystery, His long-term plan that is now being made known even to the Gentiles. That plan is Christ in you. That’s your source for the hope of eternal glory. Christ is the content of my ministry, a content I proclaim to everybody everywhere so that I can help everybody become everything that God wants them to be."
There are lots of things that call for reflection in this brief passage, as is so often the case in the Pauline writings, but two stand out with particular urgency.
The first is what Paul says about suffering. His ministry demands suffering, he says, but he doesn’t mind because he is "filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ." This does not mean that Paul thought that the redemptive suffering and death of Jesus was incomplete, as if Christ really hadn’t finished the mission on which He has been sent by His Father. Nor is it meant to imply that the success of an apostle’s ministry is dependent on his suffering, as if God were pleased by our pain or somehow made happy with our hurts. Paul’s point about suffering here seems to be that the effort involved in preaching the gospel, the patience required in dealing with the enemies of the faith provide credibility to the preacher’s mission. They are evidences of the apostle’s faithfulness to Christ, even as Christ’s suffering and death were evidence of His faithfulness to the mission He had received from His Father. It is the dedication that is behind the suffering that provides likeness to Christ, that extends Christ’s saving mission into new places and new times, that renders the results of the suffering of Christ more accessible and more universal.
What Paul says here gives us some insight into our own sufferings. Traditionally Christians have seen suffering of whatever kind as an occasion for growth in virtue, as something to be "offered up" to God as a gift to Him. This doesn’t mean that our human suffering gives God some sort of gratification He wouldn’t otherwise have. It means rather that our faithfulness to God in times of suffering, our acceptance of what God in His wisdom sends us constitutes an expression of our trust in Him and our faithfulness to Him. It makes us more like Christ whose love and faithfulness persisted to the very end of His life, in spite of the rejection and pain that resulted from that love and faithfulness.
The second major point that calls for consideration in this passage is Paul’s definition of "the mystery," of God’s plan for salvation. It doesn’t consist in esoteric knowledge or special ritual practices or keeping heavenly powers appeased and happy, as the Colossians were being invited to believe. God’s salvation "is Christ in you," he tells them. Christ in us is what constitutes justification, salvation, redemption, freedom, sanctification, transformation. Christ in us is what takes our sins away and makes us pleasing to our heavenly Father.
Sometimes people are overwhelmed with the complexity of the Catholic Christian faith. That’s understandable because it has been the subject of reverent reflection and speculation for two thousand years and because it reaches into every aspect of our human reality. The basic exposition of Catholic faith and practice, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, runs to 688 pages! Yet it all hangs together, it’s all based on a single reality: Christ in us. Everything in our Christian life is a response to Christ in us. Everything is directed toward developing Christ in us. Everything is a consequence of the implications of Christ in us. What does it mean for us to be members of the Church? It means to have Christ in us and to believe and behave accordingly. Absolutely every aspect of our faith is a preparation for or a consequence of that basic reality.
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Conversation Questions
What role has suffering played in my life?
How would my life be different if Christ were not in me?
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