Saturday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 484

As long as in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is being proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Indeed I shall continue to rejoice, for I know that this will result in deliverance for me

through your prayers and support from the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Saint Paul's Letter to the Philippians was apparently written from a jail somewhere in the Roman Empire. He could not know at the time if he would ever be released. And so, in this passage, we can hear him considering his life and ministry and whether he regrets anything. He concludes, "I shall continue to rejoice...."

In many ways our larger-than-life Apostle echoed the words of Saint John the Baptist, "He must increase; I must decrease." 

Paul has often been blamed for dramatically changing the direction of Christianity. Some think he misconstrued the story of Jesus, making the crucified Nazarene into a living god, the second person of the Holy Trinity; and then caused an irreversible break with the Jewish religion. That was certainly not his intention nor does the Catholic Church accept that reading of history.

But he did see the historic impact of Jesus and his universal significance more clearly than the original twelve apostles. Saint Paul, the Jew trained far from Jerusalem in the Roman city of Tarsus, versed in Greek philosophy, a generation younger than Jesus and the apostles, knew that the Gospel offers salvation to every human; but the Jewish religion does not. The Gospel could not be contained within the Jewish laws, customs and restrictions. This wine needed new wineskins.

Nor could it be defined by his understandings or confined to his own limited insight. Even phony missionaries who used the name of Christ to promote their own ends might serve God's purpose. As he said, "As long as in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is being proclaimed... in that I rejoice."

Jesus had  made a similar statement, "...whoever is not against you is for you."

Ideological thinking is eager to remove anyone who might disagree. The ideologue demands that his friends agree with him about everything; eventually every party splits into subgroups of more and more extremities. Meeting one another they sniff out potential disagreement, vilify them as the enemy, and trust only those who totally agree with everything they believe.
The French Revolution, which celebrated equality, liberty and fraternity, dissolved rapidly into a "reign of terror." Comrades who fought together against the ancient regime disagreed about minor questions and betrayed one another to the guillotine. We saw the same dynamic with the Nazis and Soviet Communists. They hated their enemies but they hated their comrades even worse. 

In the last thirty years we have watched the Republican party challenge one another's conservative credentials and split into moderates, libertarians, the Tea Party and ultra-right.  

Some Catholics, horrified by abortion, suspect those who oppose capital punishment and others who espouse a pro-life "seamless garment." They might not be loyal enough! I fielded several angry phone calls when we gave the Franciscan International Award to Sister Helen Prejean for her opposition to capital punishment. It doesn't take much to antagonize these people.

Ideologues claim allegiance to truth and honesty but worship power; they struggle to survive even as they create and destroy their "enemies."

Saint Paul knew he would not survive. If he escaped that jail he would announce the Gospel somewhere else, but his fate was sealed when he accepted the Lord. Whether he lived or died was not his problem. He traveled, preached and wrote during the earliest days of the Church. He could not imagine how its doctrines, liturgies, governing structures and canonical scriptures would be defined in the next three centuries. He laid the foundations but he would not see the building rise. In the meanwhile he trusted that Christ is proclaimed even by the Christians who had him arrested, jailed and run out of town. They too were instruments in God's hands.