29TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – 2016

Paul is for a large number of Catholics a closed book. We are used to the Jesus of the Gospels, which are usually the Scripture of choice for Sunday homilies. But the dense, almost indigestible chunks of Paul that form the main content of the Sunday Second Reading? What does he really have to say to us?

It is hard for us to conceive that the last Paul’s letters pre-date even the earliest of the Gospels, Mark, by at least five years. Paul was the great missionary, the one who spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, throughout the known world of his time. The Church which wrote the Gospels between about 700-100 AD had already been brought to faith in Jesus Christ by Paul’s missions and his missionary letters.

Paul’s language is dense, often difficult, and like the rabbi he once was, he thinks and argues in circles, coming back to the same ideas over and over in the course of a single passage. Yet it is Paul who holds so many of the keys to our faith. Today’s reading from the Second Letter to Timothy, is a case in point.

Paul has some quite powerful things to say about scripture and the faith it inspires. And for Paul, faith is not some kind of vague belief, like the insipid modern idea of “believing in yourself”. For him, the only faith worth having is faith in “Christ Jesus.” He expresses this unequivocally: “Take your stand upon this; proclaim the Good news of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, in or out of season.” Going for the overkill, he says, “I tell you, admonish you, exhort you to teach these things patiently.”

Do the words addressed by Paul the Apostle to a bishop 2 000 years ago have any meaning at all for us today? Most certainly. He calls us, in the same way, to stand firm in our faith, to believe in the great Christian truths we have been taught from our youth. He calls us to be His unflinching witnesses to Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, in and out of season. He “tell, admonishes and exhorts” us to attend to the Scriptures, which can “teach, refute error, correct and discipline” us.

If we are ever to convince the world that Jesus is Lord, we have to believe it ourselves, and bear witness to him at all times. The world, though it might hate us, must be able to say of us, “they really believe in something” – or rather, someone. In the world in which we live, it is time for us all to put aside the easy compromises we so often make, to lay down the exceptions to the Church’s teaching about faith in Jesus Christ which we reserve to ourselves. We must leave the Church Comfortable and become once more, like Paul, members of the Church Militant. Like Paul, we must become utterly convinced by our Faith in the Risen Lord Jesus. God will give it to us if we really ask him, if we truly want the superlative gift of Faith that he gives.

Fr Phillip