Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Our Lady of Consolation Shrine 

Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, 

in sincerity of heart, as to Christ,
not only when being watched, as currying favor,
but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,
willingly serving the Lord and not men,
knowing that each will be requited from the Lord
for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

The United States had a particularly harsh experience of slavery and it colors our reading of Saint Paul’s advice to slaves. Our Civil War brought to an end an unimaginable horror of several hundred years. It began when the Spanish brought African slaves to South America to produce sugar, shortly after the "discovery" of the western hemisphere in 1492. That experience was all the more cruel for its veneer of Christian religion, which seemed to bless the peculiar institution.

When we read Saint Paul's letters, we should understand that most people of the Roman Empire were slaves. Some of them were well educated and had positions of great responsibility. Some were gifted artists whose works are honored even today. They married, had children, owned property and, sometimes, other slaves. But, of course, like most people throughout human history, many suffered the cruel experience of toil and poverty. 

But it was a stable economic system and it had a vague awareness, as our capitalistic system has today, that people cannot suffer too much without profound discontent and the threat of rebellion. There were laws which protected slaves from the worse kind of exploitation, laws which never appeared in American jurisprudence. 

No human system is thoroughly just and fair, nor is any human system irredeemable. Communism, socialism, capitalism and slavery as economic systems each has its advantages and disadvantages. Grace, like the falling rain, finds its way into slave quarters and prison cells, brothels and opium dens. There is no containing the Word of God.

Saint Paul encouraged Christian slaves to obey their human masters because he had shown them the way of freedom. Christ did not set them free to serve their selfish instincts but to live in the freedom of the Holy Spirit, practicing generosity, joy and courage. He understood their freedom as well as he understood his own.

Eventually, after a horrific civil war, the peculiar institution collapsed here in the United States. It was repugnant to educated people who espoused 18th century principles of the Enlightenment. How could the same men who said, "All men are created equal" own slaves? Too, new technology (especially industrialized farming) rendered it obsolete.

But today, workers in our capitalist system, from Wall Street brokers to migrant field hands, still suffer from resentment, fear, hopelessness and the numbing effects of toil. If they are not chattel slaves, they are wage slaves, desperately holding onto jobs that do not honor their moral principles, courage, generosity or dignity. Our economic system can be as remorseless as slavery. It seems to have grown worse with the shrinking of the middle class, the widening gap between rich and poor, the failure of the labor movement, and chronic unemployment. 

In setting us free Jesus offers us the choice to serve the Lord and not men, and thus to serve the earth and its people. Whether we are rich or poor, slave or free, male or female, we must serve the Lord if we would know freedom.