Memorial of Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

Lectionary: 494

I have experienced much joy and encouragement from your love,
because the hearts of the holy ones
have been refreshed by you, brother.
Therefore, although I have the full right in Christ
to order you to do what is proper,
I rather urge you out of love,
being as I am, Paul, an old man,
and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus.

Everyone who has read the New Testament looks forward to that Great Getting Up Morning when we find out whether Philemon welcomed Onesimus, his runaway slave. Did he receive and free him, receive him and keep him as a slave, or punish him severely? We have only Paul’s short letter to the prominent citizen, a Christian with a large household. The reader must ask, “And then what happened?”

We might suppose Philemon accepted the Apostle’s urgent suggestion, but the legal and social systems of the time did not look favorably on runaway slaves or indulgent slave owners. This friend of Saint Paul must have pondered for a long time before he made his decision.

Clearly, Saint Paul has taken a radical stand on the issue of enslaved Christians. They should be treated with a particular deference by their Christian "owners." 

Many centuries later, Saint Peter Claver would evangelize, catechize, and baptize tens of thousands of African persons as they were brought through the port of Cartagena, Venezuela. He could not set them free, but he could raise their status in the barbaric sugar industry. Seventeenth century Europeans, rich and poor alike, satisfied their sweet tooth on the backs of enslaved Catholics. Five centuries later, we are still paying the accrued interest of our ancestors' unpaid debt.

Saint Paul approached his friend Philemon and begged him to act upon the principle of love. He frankly pulls out all the stops as he used phrases like: 

• although I have the full right in Christ 
• to order you
• do what is proper
• I urge you out of love,
• I am, Paul, an old man,
• and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus.
• I urge you 
• ...and so forth. 

He reminded his friend of the “joy and encouragement” they shared as fellow believers.

If Philemon relented and welcomed the letter carrier, Onesimus, he might have read the note to his family and the Church and left them laughing -- falling out of their seats! -- at Paul's cajoling, pleading, guilt-inducing tactics. 

But love can be shameless at times. With everything he had, Paul was fighting the deeply rooted institution of slavery. Twenty centuries later, it still appears frequently in many forms.  

 

In his recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, (“We are all family!”) Pope Francis has reminded the world that our economic and political systems must operate on the principle of love. Anything like manipulation, threats, trickery, deceit, or domination must end in violence. Even competition on an uneven field must end in disaster. If "Life is unfair" as President Kennedy once observed, the disciple of Jesus must expect to work throughout their life to set things right. We can do nothing less for our sisters and brothers, our fellow prisoners in the Lord.