Tuesday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

And even when you were dead in transgressions
and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
he brought you to life along with him,
having forgiven us all our transgressions;
obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims,
which was opposed to us,
he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross;....


Saint Paul addresses his gentile disciples in this passage, reminding them that they were not circumcised Jews and had neither knowledge of nor hope for salvation. They were dead in their sins
until Jesus brought them to life through faith and Baptism. 
We can suppose these gentiles underwent a metanoia similar to the one many of our contemporaries must go through as they enter the Church. 
The Greek word metanoia is translated as conversion but I understand it's literally something we do to our socks when we wash them. We turn them inside out. 
The Collosians probably had some ideas of good deeds and bad deeds, but they could not know that God cares very much about their moral behavior. The stories of their Greek gods resembled our own soap operas; they were tales of petty bickering and jealous rivalries. The Greeks sought their divine favor because they believed they were powerful, but thoughtful persons despised their ridiculous behaviors. 


Saint Paul had to tell the Colossians some of their ordinary behavior -- gossip, adultery, petty theft, and so forth -- was below their dignity and insulted the divine image from which God had created them. Then he announced the Divine Mercy that Jesus brought to them. And then he stood back and waited as this message sank in. They were both troubled and elated. They might have felt both disoriented by the newly revealed Truth, and liberated by its overwhelming Goodness. 


But he was especially eager to remind them of Jesus in whom "dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily." This message of the Incarnation is an endlessly wonderful mystery for us. According to their mythology, the Greek gods often meddled in the affairs of men but rarely did them any good. Our God came to save us by becoming the most meek and defenseless of all human beings. By his crucifixion he despoiled the principalities and the powers, (their so-called gods), making a public spectacle of them and leading them away in triumph by his cross (in the same manner that captive royalty was displayed on parade in Rome. You'll remember Elizabeth Taylor as the indomitable Cleopatra carried on the shoulders of slaves into Rome, before Richard Burton as Marc Antony.) 


Rather than hiding our shameful sins, as we are wont to do, Jesus nailed them like a "rap sheet" to his cross, and thus delivered us from the guilt of our sins. (The gospels describe the sign over his head as "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews"; more familiarly as INRI -- Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum.) 


This passage from Saint Paul's letter to the Collosians is endlessly fascinating; it deserves repeated meditative readings.