Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A golden carp
in MSF lake

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

Saint Paul’s boasting may not sound as strange to us as he thought it was to his Corinthian congregation. We’ve all heard outraged persons boast of their suffering as they demanded more respect. Paul is angry because certain Christian missionaries have fundamentally altered the doctrine he preached in Corinth, and they crowed about their spectacular visions, miracles, and victories. They probably counted the number of souls they saved as they undermined the foundations he had laid.

Paul’s accomplishments, as he saw them at the time, were far more modest. He had preached the gospel in several cities and won a few converts to the new faith. As the Holy Spirit drove him to other places he wondered if he had accomplished anything during those hard years he spent in Corinth, Thessalonica and Philippi. He had not left behind any architectural marvels to memorialize him – no churches, schools or bingo halls. Some of his protégés had abandoned the faith; some had joined other Christian missionaries and dissed him; only a few still preached the gospel as he understood it.

So we can understand his distress and the angry, frustrated mental state that inspires him to write today’s harangue. Angrily he boasts of his weakness.

But, being the Apostle of the Cross, he also forces upon his readers his connection to that greatest of all failures, Jesus Christ.

As we hear the New Testament announced to us we should try to remember the obscurity in which the Church lived its first century. The gospel appealed mostly to slaves and servants; it did not attract the wealthy, learned or powerful. The Good News that began on Calvary arrived at Rome in chains, much as Depression-era hoboes arrived in America’s major cities on tie rods, and cockroaches in used clothing.

“Once, just once” he probably grumbled, “I’d like to be welcomed to town with a brass band and sent on my way with an army of supporters.” But, despite Paul’s apparent despair, he knows very well that God’s work is being accomplished. He can only preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Any other gospel of triumph, success, prosperity, health or ease is so much hokum.

Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast.
To my shame I say that we were too weak!

Saint Paul’s affection for his “dear children in the Lord” binds his church together even as our affection must bind us together today. As the Corinthians realized they had been exploited by the “super apostles” they came back to their loyal, long-suffering father. And they forgave his harangue even as we forgive our parents – and ourselves – for the occasional, unfortunate outburst.