Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We are finishing the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, let us pray:
Father,
When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.
Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
Today's chapters are Galatians 4-6.
Now that we've gotten through the longest of Paul's epistles, it will seem as though we are zipping through the rest at lightning speed. In fact, we are reading the second half of Galatians today!
Yesterday when we left off, Paul had just launched his "Gentiles are now genuine children of Abraham" theme (in answer to the worries back in Galatia that perhaps they ought to follow the Mosaic practices). Everything God promised Abraham was theirs, in Christ, "the" descendant of Abraham on which all the promises depended. In Chapter 4, Paul tries to emphasize the dignity of the Abrahamic covenant by means of a comparison that could only work in that ancient culture.
He had already reminded the Galatians that God himself "sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law" (4:4). This is Paul's only explicit mention of the Blessed Virgin, whose faith Luke's Gospel highlighted as similar to that of Abraham, who "did not doubt God's promise in unbelief" (Rom 4:20): "Blessed is she who believed that the things promised by the Lord would be fulfilled" (Lk 1:45).
It is all so that "the Spirit might dwell in our hearts." As Jesus said at the Last Supper: "It is better for you that I go, for if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7). And the first thing the Spirit does within us is give us the freedom of Christ! This is the ability to love our neighbor with generosity and not out of secret self-interest; the freedom that expresses itself in the "fruits of the Holy Spirit": charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are the qualities of Christ himself! The Spirit makes Jesus manifest in the world through us! This puts questions all about "law" in their proper place.
In his closing remarks, Paul himself takes the pen from the scribe and repeats his warnings about trying to save oneself through legal observances, and then expresses the heartfelt desire, "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ! The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world!"
Start reading here.
N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography is the book I would recommend to someone who wanted to read one (only one) book that combined the life and letters of St Paul. Written by a noted Scripture, this is a flowing narrative that is scripturally enlightening and historically sound. Wright gives the reader a way of following Paul through the Acts of the Apostles and the writing of his letters, making Paul the person that much more approachable, and the letters themselves more readable as a result of having a social and historical context.
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