The Messenger - April 2009 - Editorial April 2009
By John Looby SJ - 01 April 2009
Understanding St Paul : ‘I don’t get it. He never seems to quote what Christ said! But the gospels seem to do nothing else.’
A parishioner leaving Mass on a Sunday morning was sharing with me his reaction to reading St. Paul’s letters to the young Christian Churches.
He had decided to respond to this jubilee year of St. Paul by reading his epistles as we usually call them. He had previously found them too difficult and had given up trying to understand them. Being now a little older, and maybe a little wiser, he was trying again. Avoiding his opening words, I asked what he found St. Paul did talk about. After trying out different things and rejecting them, he continued, ‘he goes back to the resurrection a lot. Almost as if he took up where the evangelists left off.’
I could only marvel that all by himself he had got to the heart of St. Paul – but then I was not giving the Holy Spirit any credit. He guides us into understanding scripture.
I wondered if my friend had come across Paul’s startling comment about the resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians,: ‘if Christ has not been raised (from the dead) then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless’, (1Cor.15:14). The apostles and evangelists talk about how Christ came into their lives, what he said and did; it was only at the end of his life that the resurrection burst into their lives and made then think again about what he had said and done. For Paul it was different. He only knew the resurrected Christ. Paul was accosted by Christ on the road to Damascus and learned something he never forgot. Paul learned just how the resurrection had changed things for
everyone, for the Jews who had been expecting a Messiah, but also for the pagans who might have thought they had no place in God’s plans.
Paul thanks God unceasingly for the faith and lives of the new Christians.
He sees the fruit of the resurrection in their vitality and joy. At one stroke Christ had abolished the absolute power of death over human life, and the power of sin to damn the human soul. The resurrection enabled forgiveness, and the restoration of the human race had begun. In its power countless people have experienced new life even in situations where there seemed to be no hope, when hatreds died, when bitter divisions were healed, and hope could again bring back vitality to living. Paul saw it this way: He whose power is at work in us is powerful enough, and more than powerful enough, to carry out his purpose beyond all our hopes and dreams. (Ephesians 3:20)
John Looby, S.J.
Editor