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The Catholic Telegraph
December 7, 2001
Like last Sunday’s second reading, this week’s is taken from the final section of Paul’s letter to the Romans. This section offers Paul’s readers a series of moral exhortations that provide direction for their daily life. The part that we read from on this second Sunday of Advent is concerned with the ever-sensitive question of the relationship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Paul has just told the Romans that they need to defer to one another’s wishes and offers the example of Christ whose life was spent not in doing what He wanted, but in carrying out the will of His Father. To strengthen his example, Paul cites Psalm 69.10.
As our reading begins, Paul goes off in a couple of digressions, the first of which is to explain why he cites Scripture. Scripture (i.e., the Hebrew Scripture that we call the Old Testament) is written for our instruction, in order to give us hope through the perseverance it nurtures in us. Paul prays that this perseverance and nurture will lead Christians to live in harmony with one another, giving glory to the Father by their unanimity in Christ Jesus.
He now returns to the main theme he had been treating and encourages the Jewish and Gentile Christians to "welcome" one another, i.e., to be open to one another, to reach out to one another even as Christ was accepting of all of them. Both groups have been the recipients of God’s attentions: the Jews exemplifying God’s faithfulness to the promises made to their patriarchs, the Gentiles being the recipients of God’s mercy. Finally comes a closing Scripture quotation (Psalm 18.50) that alludes to God being glorified among the Gentiles. (In the full text of Romans, this quotation is followed by three more, all speaking of the place of the Gentiles in God’s plans.)
This reading is composed of three small paragraphs dealing, in order, with hope, harmony, and hospitality. Our loving outreach to one another should result in peace and unanimity which, in turn, will serve to strengthen our hope, our expectation of future blessings still to come from God. It is fitting that Jewish and Gentile Christians love and care for and defer to one another in view of the care that has already been addressed to each group by God.
This little passage is held together by groups of words that lead from one part to the next. Endurance and encouragement in Scripture are connected with the God of endurance and encouragement granting Christ’s people harmony. This harmony involves glorifying God with one accord and one voice. As Paul returns to the main subject of this section of Romans in the last sentences of our reading, we find God’s "truthfulness" (i.e., faithfulness) to "the circumcised" and "the prophets" set forth in reflection to God’s "mercy" to "the Gentiles." It’s a carefully balanced passage in which we seem to see one idea leading to another in an overall context dealing with the relationships between the two groups of Christians.
But what does all this have to do with Advent and with us? It may be that this passage from Romans was chosen for this Sunday as a commentary on the first reading, which concludes with Isaiah prophesying the Gentiles’ search for the future Messiah of the Jews. It may also be intended to shed light on the gospel reading in which we hear John the Baptist warning the Pharisees and Sadducees that they shouldn’t put their hope for salvation in their being descendants of Abraham.
The lesson for us, as we move into the third millennium of Christ’s Church, is that the final state of Christ’s kingdom, the future toward which we are all moving together, will not be characterized by exclusion but by inclusion. The salvation that Jesus accomplished is not meant to be for a few people, carefully selected from restricted groups. It is to be a universal salvation, open to everyone, extended to everyone, appropriate for everyone. The reason why salvation will be for everyone is simply because God loves everyone and salvation is a matter of being loved by God.
It’s important for us to remind ourselves occasionally that salvation is directed toward everyone, because we are inclined to think sometimes that salvation will be limited to a few, to an elite group that carefully keeps the rules and diligently learns the required lessons, a group that deserves to be with God because of who and what they are, a group that, obviously, includes only people like ourselves. Deep in our hearts, thanks to the inheritance of original sin, we want to believe that, if we just try hard enough, we can make God love us and make God give us a happiness from which others will be excluded.
God’s treatment of both Jews and Gentiles over the centuries teaches us that it isn’t like that. God’s love is freely given to us all. God’s salvation is freely granted to us all. Our task is to respond to God’s loving and God’s giving by the loving and giving we offer to one another.
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Conversation Questions.
To whom do I find it difficult to reach out in welcome?
How do I respond to the universality of God’s call to salvation?
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