Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 467

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus,

called to be an Apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God,

which he promised previously through his prophets in the holy Scriptures,

the Gospel about his Son, descended from David according to the flesh,

but established as Son of God in power

according to the Spirit of holiness

through resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now there's a name for you. With sixty-five words, Saint Paul introduced himself to the Roman church. He described himself as "a slave of Christ Jesus" and "an apostle who is set apart for  the Gospel...."

Arriving at the end of that how-do-you-do, you know that Paul is not terribly interested in himself. Nor should you be. He wants to tell you about Jesus, a descendant of King David who is established in power as the Son of God.

In fact the Apostle was never very interested in his personal advancement. He says of his life before the revelation on the road to Damascus,

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city. At the feet of Gamaliel I was educated strictly in our ancestral law and was zealous for God...

Clearly, he was one of those who needs a cause. He would not be satisfied with feeding the machinery of industry, business, government, or religion. His encounter with the very person of Jesus had completely redirected his energies. Where he had wanted to prevent people from straying from the Law of Moses he now tried to draw people into the very Body of Christ. They should eat his flesh and drink his blood and breathe his breath. And everyone should serve according to the gifts they were given, whether as evangelists, teachers, prophets, administrators, or whatever.

No matter what others might think or say of them, the Christian's identity could not be found outside the Church. There would be neither Jew nor gentile, slave or free, male or female -- those alien categories -- within our community.

As Christians find ourselves living in a post-Christian world in which few can name a book of the bible and fewer would recognize the Eucharist as sacred, the faithful can no longer afford the luxury of anonymity. Those who are lost to the Church are lost, period. I meet them often in the VA, the self-identified "Christians" who have only a vague knowledge of any religion, much less of their Baptism. If they learned faith from their parents, their children know nothing of it. But, they assure me, they are "spiritual," which can mean anything and usually means nothing.

The Catholic must be connected horizontally to a local church and vertically in the history of our Church. Virtual connections don't count. Protestants should likewise know their own denominational and sectarian history. Our history is ancient, our heroes are legion, our contributions to civilization are substantial, and our sins are undeniable. Our anchor  in Truth saves us from the nonsense that passes for culture around us. Saint Paul, an educated man of his time, knew the challenges the Gospel faced, the religious myths, fantasies, fabrications and downright lies. He knew where he stood in time and space; and meeting him, you knew where he stood. If you stayed with him, you discovered where you belonged in God's kingdom.