Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060712.cfm

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David:
such is my Gospel, for which I am suffering,
even to the point of chains, like a criminal.
But the word of God is not chained.

When I regard my ministry as my particular path to success I dread failure. Nothing good can come of failure. Saint Paul discovered a better path, one that saw failure as a fine way to announce the gospel. Apparently he spent long periods of time in city jails. He encountered opposition from his former colleagues, the Pharisees; from Jews; and from some Christians, especially the so-called super apostles that he described in the letter to the Galatians. They seemed to take turns having him arrested!

“Not a problem” for Saint Paul. He was confident of the Holy Spirit’s guidance in all his decisions. If some of them led to arrest, beatings and imprisonment, so be it. “The efforts are ours; the results are God’s.” He was sure there were no barriers, boundaries, fences or chains to confine the Word of God. He could announce the Gospel in the jail to bored prisoners just as well as he could preach it in the synagogue to suspicious Jews. He didn’t need to speak to the influential or the affluent in the hope it might trickle down to the common people. The Gospel doesn’t require human authority.

In fact when he did make his reasoned appeal to the Athenians they were only amused by his outrageous declaration that a man had been raised from the dead. “You’ll have to tell us more about that, some other time!” they said as they laughed. Athens may have been the intellectual center of the Roman Empire but the gospel found better soil and sank deeper roots in Corinthian brothels.

Addressing today’s second reading from the Gospel of Saint Mark, loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength also seems like wasted energy, misplaced affection and failed effort to a lot of people. “What’s the point?” they wonder. “Does God really need your love? Shouldn’t you be doing something useful, instead of spending time in prayer?”

Here is a mystery we cannot explain; a secret revealed to the elect: success and failure mean nothing.