Reflections on Paul

Number 14

Paul says of the value of Jewishness, "Much, in every respect. [For] in the first place, they were entrusted with the utterances of God."

Paul is not referring to the gift of the Law through Moses. He is referring to the fact that God's path for the revelation of his word and the fulfillment of the scriptural prophecy of the coming of the savior in the person of Jesus. The utterances refer to our faith history as lived out through Jewish history. The utterances were the words of the prophets who called out to the people of the time to maintain faith only in God and live in awe of his dominion over this world and his gifts of justice of mercy. The old testament, in Paul's view, serves only to remind us of God's call to us and that every pointed to the coming of Jesus which brought an end to the Messianic prophecy. To be the carriers of the seeds of faith, however, was not enough. The Jews were called to recognize how Jesus gave their history an end purpose. Jesus restored humanity to the original covenant with Abraham. As is said often in the Old Testament, "He is our God, and we are his people, the flock he shepherds." His people are were not just Jews, much to the surprise of the Jewish leaders, but all humanity, all people, Jews and gentiles alike.

Peace

Reflections on Paul

Number 13

After the close of the chat last evening, I turned to review the Mass readings for today. After slogging through the seemingly endless reading from Tobit, I encountered the Gospel reading for the day from Mark. Jesus was asked by a scribe about which was first of all the commandments and Jesus responded, famously, the first commandment was to “love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” And then he said, second, we are to love our neighbor as our self.

So there it was it for me - the biggest rock of all to roll around until I could find a proper resting spot for it. I was thunderstruck by the timing. Minutes after coming to the end of several weeks of study of the letters of Paul, the whole point of what he was trying to teach us jumped out of the lectionary and struck me squarely in the head.

The letter to Romans beautifully set this all up. God, we quickly learn in Chapter 1, is wrathful and will actively respond to disbelief and unfaithfulness by handing “them” (us) over to impurity, degrading passions and improper actions. From there we quickly move toward the description of a righteous God who through his justice and mercy sent us salvation from our wickedness in the form of Jesus. Over and over again, Paul reminds us all peoples, Jew and gentile alike, were initially granted God’s mercy through our creation. Through the fall of Adam we all fell from mercy into his wrath and we all became needful of his continued just judgment and mercy.

In Romans Paul continued to argue, as in the previous letters read, Jewish reliance on the law was foolish because it focused our attention on our behavior which, through the all of Adam, would never lead us toward God. To be sons and daughters of Abraham requires to not having faith in the law but, rather, to have faith in God and only in God because salvation does not come from the law but salvation comes only from God.

In Chapter 5 we learn more about faith, hope and love. If we have faith, hope in salvation will grow and hope will always be rewarded through God’s enduring life. Love becomes the first commandment 13:8-10 since we are loved and we, in turn, love, that love will govern our actions. Love will become all the law we need because if we allow love to direct us, we will fulfill the law.

With that long circle, we return to where we started with today’s Gospel. In our return, my return, to the beginning, we understand we are not governed by law. We are fulfilled in the law by God’s mercy and right justice through the faith we inherited from our father Abraham. Our fulfillment comes through saving death and resurrection of God’s only son who was sent by God restore the faith covenant made with Abraham. I think I get the message….

Peace, my brothers, and live in the joy we know only through our acceptance of faith in the Risen Christ and our willingness to respond to his call to love. While we may be sons of Abraham, we are truly the beloved children of an ever loving God. 

Peace

Reflections on Paul

Number 12

Just out of curiosity, I quickly scanned both Galatians and Romans and found that wherever the name Abraham was found, the word faith was virtually always found nearby. In fact it was almost always within the sentence. The message was communicated over and over again that we are inheritors of Abraham through his faith in God. Not only were the children of Israel, the chosen ones, inheritors of God’s mercy and grace, ALL nations were equally and literally blessed. To be sons and daughters of Abraham carries the obligation to be faithful to God and to continue in his kindness in justifying us by ordering our life in the flesh toward sustenance and fulfillment of our life in the spirit. It becomes very clear that through Moses God gave the Jews the law to order their lives and to keep them from error it is only through the faith of Abraham they are justified and saved.


Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 11

What Paul says about God:

1.        God gave us Jesus whose sacrifice would rescue us from evil in accordance with God’s will. (1:1 and 1:4)

2.        God extends us grace and peace. (1:3)

3.        God destined Paul from birth to proclaim gospel of Jesus to the gentiles (1:15)

4.        It was through the grace of God that Christ freed us from justification through the law (2:21)

5.        God supplies the Spirit that works might deeds among us does it through grace that comes from faith and not works. (3:5)

6.        God foretold the good news he would justify the gentiles when he blessed Abraham because of Abraham’s faith. (3:8)

7.        God sent Jesus to that we might be adopted as free children, free from the burden of the law. (3:26 and elsewhere)

8.        God does not want us to be “lawless” because he wants us to refrain from immorality that would keep us from “inherit(ing) the kingdom of God.”

Paul’s repudiation of the law is striking from his prior life as a Pharisee. He morphed from being a driven defender of the law and Judaic tradition to emerge as even more driven opponent of those things. Paul was not satisfied with simply preaching a message of redemption by God’s grace through faith and to just proclaim that Jesus came to fulfill the law. Instead he defiantly smashed the idea that adherence to the law would serve God’s purpose. He personifies well the old maxim that there is no zealot like convert. 

Paul confidently proclaims his understanding of God’s purpose over and over again to drive home the message God wants us to have faith in him for the blessings he bestowed on us through Christ. His interpretation of God’s revelation is God blessed us through Abraham’s faith, determined we needed to be schooled us through Mosaic law but then freed from that same law through the death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus. 

The simplest way for me to relate how Paul preached the will of God is to say, according to Paul, God did not want us to rely on doing things like observing the law but by to have faith in him through the freeing gospel of Jesus. I understood the message well by the end of the first chapter but became dizzy from the repeated pounding he delivered to the Galatians by the time I staggered to the conclusion of the letter.

Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 10

The recurring, or more precisely, the continuing theme of Paul teaching to avoid reliance on the law and to live by faith in Jesus is both simple and yet maddeningly complex in grasping. The law proclaim by Moses was really quite simple  and was contained in 10 simple commandments. Laws are important because they provide a construct for forming a community or society and provide a framework that will endure down through generations. 

We need law for there to be order so laws are critical to the successful formation of a human organization. The problem is that what God gave to us in simplicity we made complex through our use of logic. We managed to take 10 simple rules and make them so burdensome that they become paralyzing. How did the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath get to the point that it became unlawful to drag a chair across the room? We lost the ability to remember to focus on the giver of the law but rather became consumed by the law itself. 

Paul preached that we should return our focus to God and his gift to us. the reality of Christ crucified for us is that God chose that gift as a way of restoring our focus on him. Paul does not teach us to be lawless because he exhorted us to "walk with God" and to live a moral life befitting our spiritual relationship with God. If we allow the gospel to govern us we will not need the old law but will allow God to guide our actions as Jesus taught us in the beatitudes.

Reflections on Paul

Number 9

In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians we learn in the very first sentence that God calls us to do his will. Paul was called to be an apostle and he so states in very plain language. He goes on to remind the church in Corinth, through a message just as relevant today, that through Christ we are sanctified so we “are not lacking in any spiritual gifts.”

Later in the letter Paul talks at great length about how God has created each of us to seek certain gifts, charisms, bestowed on us by the Holy Spirit so we each might have a role to play in the building of his body which is the church. Spiritual gifts are not talents or attributes like speed, strength, intelligence or attractiveness but are, rather, gifts intended to empower us to become effective ministers on his behalf. In chapter 12 Paul references some of the gifts of the spirit such as the expression of wisdom, the expression of knowledge, healing and so on. He compares the gifts to parts of the body and we are challenged to not “consider (one part of the body) less honorable…”  Paul taught us to not exalt the possession of any particular part of the body over another because honor is given to the body as whole. He said if “one part is honored, all parts share its joy.”

The underlying theme is one of humility. In considering this, I thought about an old aphorism about pride which comes in the form of a cutting personal insult attributed to former football coach Barry Switzer who said of some unfortunate person, “He was born on third base and has went through life thinking he hit a triple.” We can be like that, we humans can and those of us who work in the service of God can live up the full measure of Switzer’s insult as well as anyone. When we engage in service or the ministry of God, we can be filled up with pride which can cause us to forget who is the minister and who is God.

Look to 1 Cor 3:6-8: “I planted, Apollos watered but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth.” I need to constantly remind myself service is a demand to seek humility for having been called and an opportunity to be grateful for the chance to be a conduit of the gifts granted me by God. Whatever we accomplish we achieve only when we become willing to humbly serve his will and not our own.

Peace

Reflections on Paul 

Number 8

It is funny to think I have read the First to the Corinthians countless times, reflected on several passages in some considerable detail but still failed to fully recognize the exact impact of 6:11:

That is what some of you used to be [sinners of various stripes and kind]; but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Though baptized, the Corinthians did not receive a spiritual salvation which freed the Corinthians from the vagaries of human desire and coarse behavior. Baptism did not provide some sort of religious get out of jail free card to allow Corinthians to live within the culturally acceptable mores of a hedonistic culture pervasive in the 1^st century which were incompatible with Christian moral teaching. 

I was struck by the similarity between this way of thinking and an unfair and inaccurate concept the sacrament of confession allows Catholics to sin freely because they can be washed free of sin via a quick trip to the confessional. Nothing could be further from the truth but a number of non-Catholics belief we can live a life filled with debauchery and sin and then go to confession and being freed from the effects of immoral behavior. Sadly, there likely a far greater number of Catholics than we would like to admit exist who share the same I-can-do-what-I-want-as-long- as-I-go-to-confession mentality.

During the course and scope of the epistle, Paul deconstructs the notion pride is beneficial; incest is acceptable, associating with anyone who is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber. He goes on to explain that sexual immorality is destructive and is a desecration of a temple for the Holy Spirit. The trick for us to see beyond the archaic construct of ancient society and to seek to live up the moral standards defined by Paul.

Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 7

The question is asked is if we are a body with a soul or soul with a body. To argue the point allowed the Gnostics and the Corinthians before them to think that we are a body with a soul. If so, once the soul has been saved through baptism, would the body still matter? Conversely if we are soul with a body, do we need the body to to be saved? Either answer misses the point Paul is making. We are body AND soul. If our soul is saved through baptism we are called to use our body to glorify the savior. To do so allows us to begin to experience the joy we will find on heaven while we are still here on earth. Thanks be to God for making this known to us through Paul!

Reflections on Paul

Number 6

A short quote from Simone Weil that is relevant to the Philippians hymn - Phil 2:4-11:

"An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it like Christ did of his real divinity" (Gravity and Grace, 30)

When it comes to learning about our faith, I feel as if I am standing on a beach trying to drink down the entire ocean one coffee cup full at a time. There is so much to swallow and so little time to swallow it. At moment I am trying to drink in so much so quickly that most of water of knowledge is spilling off my chin onto my previously clean white dress shirt.

Anyway, I have spent some time sharing space with the concept of a grant of imaginary divinity. The connection to the hymn, I suspect, comes from the use of the word form. Jesus was in the form of God but he emptied himself to take the form of a slave that was human in likeness and appearance. We tend to describe things has having both form and substance.  Jesus was in the form of God and then also became in the form of man but he was also in the substance of God and man through the mystery of homeostatic union. His divinity and humanity were not imaginary in and sense.

So what of imaginary divinity? Humans are created in the image of God. In order to be visible or understandable the image must have a form that we can grasp. The form, however, does not have the substance of God. We are promised we that through the promised glorification of the second coming, we will be of the same substance as the risen Christ but for now our divinity has form but no real substance. It is imaginary.

What is the invisible divinity we strip away? Our freedom to choose, to make our decisions, to act on our initiative, to attempt to create what something new. We have to use our God granted free will to empty ourselves of our drive to rule our lives as we wish to chose to be obedient. Like God we have the ability to choose. Unlike God we are not free to determine his will. We have to strip away this notion of freedom in order to find the true freedom of eternal life by becoming obedient.

Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 5

Paul uses imagery that remains powerful to us today even though we live in very different times. The use of the word libation can, however, lead to a little confusion since the term is not seen in the same perspective as it was then. There is a popular tavern here in my home town called the Libation Station and it is just like any tavern – people gather in social atmosphere to share some alcoholic beverages. We think of libations as being nothing more than just of drinks.

Paul, however, was referring to something completely different than just pouring out a bottle of the good stuff. Typical of Paul, he was likely connecting two different concepts. Take a peek at Genesis 35:14. Here find Jacob pouring out a libation of oil on a sacred pillar. The Greet root of libation, liebein,  refers to sacrifice. Jacob made a sacrifice of oil to God. There is an even large perspective to consider. The practice of libation was very wide spread through antiquity particularly in ancient Greece. Our Phillipian friends might not catch the Old Testament reference but they would surely catch the inference that Paul was pouring his life blood out as a sacrifice to God. To them the practice of libation would be as commonplace as making a toast at a wedding is to us.

Peace

Reflections on Paul

Number 4

The question is this: what is it of Jesus that Paul wants us to imitate. What has resonated with me can be found in Philippians 2:3 where we are called to not act out of sense of selfishness or vanity but to put others first. We are to avoid self-interest. 

We see in Philippians 3:7-11 Paul put aside his own sense of importance and turned away from a position of respect and esteem to become a humble servant who suffers many trial and tribulations. He remained ever faithful to his call to spread the word of the sacrificial death, resurrection and salvic return of Christ and to live life as called. 

There is a specific reference in 4:2 to two people to stop bickering and to come a common understanding. I can easily change the names from those of the ladies cited to Rick and (fill in the blank). Is that not the first lesson from our new Holy Father – to focus on service of others rather than matters that divide us? Gulp. That is me being talked to here. The lesson we can learn from the Philippians is to do just as Paul states in 4:9 when he urges the community to keep doing what they have learned from him in his example to them.

Reflections on Paul 

Number 3

The third “Psalm” of Sunday Evening Prayer 1 which falls on 4th Saturday of the 4 week Psalter is the hymn from Philippians. That means, taking other factors into account which dictate the contents of Liturgy of the Hours, we pray the Hymn 9 or 10 times a year. That would include, by coincidence, last night. I am, therefore, familiar with the Hymn and have spent some time reflecting on it.

Still, I have never considered it in the manner suggested by the Father Neyrey. Prior reflections have led me to think of verse 6, which points out that Jesus did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, to mean that Jesus, though divine, wanted us to see him in human form and that all expressions of his divine power were strictly related to service of others.

He did not throw himself off a high precipice when tempted by Satan just to prove his power. Instead he resisted temptation which was something he calls all of to do on a daily basis. Even though he had the power to pull down the walls of the temple in the same manner that Joshua brought down walls of Jericho he stuck to the message of his gospels that center on matters of heaven and eternity. I was close but I did not see the even bigger picture – Jesus is the new Adam but where Adam and Eve thought themselves equal to God when they grasped the fruit and ate it, Jesus remained perfectly obedient. 

Cool stuff. 

Peace.

Reflections on Paul 

Number 2

Sitting back and reflecting on the Letter to Philemon, a number of gospel-driven themes come to mind which clearly warrant canonical status given the book.

The first impression is one of freedom, not just freedom as in the opposite of slavery but freedom in terms of being able to make a morale choice consistent with a new morale framework that comes with the Christian message. Slavery was as much a part of everyday life in the 1^st century AD as pet ownership is in our time. Being either a slaveholder or a slave was no barrier to professing Christianity as far forward in time as the US Civil War.

In modern times, embracing a Christian faith would bring with it an abhorrence to slavery in any manner. Paul does not condemn Philemon nor does he condemn the practice. He just very simply and casually appeals to Philemon to do the right thing of his (Philemon’s) free will. We know from what we experience in other texts Paul is perfectly capable of bringing on the heavy stuff. Think about the pan of hot gravy he spilled on the Galatians – (Gal. 6:6 ). He makes a specific point of not being heavy handed in his discourse in this letter which, of course, contradicts his efforts to be light handed.

Paul surely wanted Philemon to come to his own decision about slavery for reasons not fully articulated. Perhaps Philemon owned other slaves and Paul’s ultimate goal would be the freedom of all of Philomon’s holdings. The point is that if Philemon were to find his way to free one slave, he might also rise to freeing all his slaves and to become an example for others. 

Reflections on St. Paul

Number 1 

My understanding of Paul has changed over the years and, with study, I have come to greatly appreciate Paul. Clearly he would not be the kind of person who would be easy to be around. There would be little patience with anyone suffering from even the slightest passing bout with acedia. I suspect the intensity of his personality could be positively withering to encounter. There is good reason he kept on the move and his reasons for moving on were not always related to the need to move to a new area to spread the gospel.

Paul’s great gift to the world beyond the Jewish culture is how he focused on spreading Christianity to Gentiles. Would it be too simplistic to say that anyone us of would be Christian today if his arguments at the Council of Jerusalem had not carried the day? Just today we heard how Paul and Barnabas turned from the non-listening Jewish community to preach to the gentiles who were far more receptive to the Gospel.

My greatest appreciation of Paul is that he was a convert to Christianity. The other disciples knew Jesus personally and traveled with him during the period of his human ministry. Paul presumably did not know Jesus prior to the Crucifixion but he certainly came to know Jesus as a result of his encounter on the road to Damascus.

Paul was a passionate and ardent enemy of the church and suddenly and dramatically became the single greatest force of evangelization in history. I am of English descent and was raised a Methodist in a community that was overwhelmingly Irish and Catholic. I was, therefore, in no particular hurry to convert. Fortunately, I met my Catholic wife who eventually won me over. I don’t mean to say that my Protestant upbringing made me hostile to the Catholic Church nor did I spend much time waging war on the church. I am pretty sure I never threw any rocks at anyone because they were Catholic but I was a very reluctant convert. I was skeptical about many facets of church doctrine until circumstance led to a re-conversion/re-evangelization experience that changed the direction of my life. My point is that Paul is the guiding light for all converts, including me.

Paul teaches us – and me- how to live the message we learn about from the Gospels and what implications that has in how we behave and how we see the world.