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 Philippians 4, Colossians 1-2 and (because it is Sunday) Psalms 144 and 145.
As he prepares to send the recovered Epaphroditus back to Macedonia, Paul urges two women of the community to be reconciled, and a third (an unidentifiable "yokemate" or partner) to assist them. Although Philippi is not riven with the kind of quarrels we saw in Corinth, unity in the Church is too precious a good to overlook something that could put it at risk.
In writing to Colossae, Paul was addressing a community he had not not directly founded (see Col 1:7-8). It is possible that Epaphras and others had been "missioned" from another Church (Ephesus?) to evangelize the surrounding areas, much as Paul and Barnabas had been sent forth from Antioch. Written at the same time as Ephesians, and delivered by the same trusted messenger, Colossians resembles that longer Epistle, starting with Paul's prayer for the community, and his majestic poem in honor of Christ, "the image of the invisible God" (1:15). This Christ is the Lord of Creation!
Paul also alludes to his prison sufferings and remarks that through them, he can somehow "make up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his Body, the Church" (1:24-29). Obviously nothing was "lacking" in the Passion and Death of the Son of God, so what can Paul possibly mean? Perhaps we can go back to our reading yesterday from Philippians (1:12) where he reflected that his imprisonment was serving to "advance the cause of the Gospel," even though personal enemies were trying to make things worse for him. Because Paul is in Christ, the sufferings of his imprisonment belong to Christ and are effective with the grace of Christ. In other words, because Christ suffered for us, suffering can be meaningful. And Paul, who loves Christ so much, loves what Christ loves: Christ's body and bride, the Church. So Paul gladly shares the sufferings that make him similar to Christ with the same disposition of heart. If you've ever heard an older Catholic exhort you to "offer it up" when you had a pain or annoyance to bear, the theological justification comes from Colossians.
In Chapter 2 Paul addresses some of the strange teachings that are making their way around Asia Minor (and, truth to tell, the world of social media today). Once again, "the flesh" or "the carnal body" is not the human body created by God, but human nature (including the fallen mind, will, and heart) dominated by sin.
For the most part, Psalm 144 should sound kind of familiar with its echoes of many other Psalms we have already prayed with. (I used to get it mixed up with Psalm 18 because of the literal copy-and-paste from that Psalm right at the beginning!) Notice how beautifully the psalm expresses a condition of peril, but framed on all sides by reassurances of God's power and love.
After Psalm 145 the Psalter will explode in a series of glorious fireworks in praise of God: The "final five" are a unit of their own, a doxology for the entire Book of Psalms. Psalm 145 prepares the way with its careful alphabetical structure and its repeated declarations of the majesty of the Creator. According to Konrad Schaefer, OSB: "The poetic pattern exemplifies the thoroughness of praise for God’s well-ordered creation. The Hebrew word meaning “every” or “all”… is repeated 19 times… an indivisible number emphasiz[ing] the completeness of the praise and accent[ing] God’s eternity" (Berit Olam: Psalms, page 337). There's much, much more in Schaefer's write-up, but you are better off savoring (and praying!) the Psalm itself! (How suitable that we will be praying this and the "Doxology" during Advent!)
Finish reading Philippians here; start reading Colossians here and start the Psalms 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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