A Reflection for Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
Letter writing is a lost art in the digital age—but not for people in prison, where the daily mail is still an occasion. I confess that any letter written from prison catches my heart, having worked in a prison library and seen many a prisoner taking refuge in the library, quietly writing a letter home. I can imagine St. Paul in the same situation as he wrote his letter to the Philippians.
It’s an uncharacteristically affectionate letter, this missive from which today’s first reading is taken. Paul openly expresses his love and longing for his brothers and sisters in faith. Now that I’m officially old, I get Paul’s sentimentality, his waxing poetic, his scattering of endearments. I also understand his desire in his later years for his life to have meant something and been beneficial to others.
When we are young, we seek out teachers and mentors, “those who thus conduct themselves according to the model,” as Paul puts it, which he himself represents to his readers. It may seem vain to hold oneself up as a model of righteousness, but since his dramatic conversion, Paul has never made any bones about the fact that he lives only to proclaim Christ crucified and resurrected. He holds himself to strict spiritual standards and expects the same of those who have followed him. He stands, as he beseeches his readers to stand, “firm in the Lord.”
When we are older we realize that, for better or for worse, we have been those role models and mentors for the next generation. It happens gradually, and then all at once, that we’ve become the elders. As we mature, we come to find that the “earthly things” that used to occupy our days and minds have dimmed in importance, and that we are presently more concerned with intangible things, with posterity, with our legacy, with the light of our souls. We leave those earthly things to the young folks now. And we try to point them away from their stomachs and shift their focus toward God, even as we perceive that our time to “go rejoicing to the house of the Lord” (today’s responsorial psalm) is ever closer.
Paul is therefore a model for young and an example for old as he writes from his prison cell. His faith journey both challenges us and reassures all of us that as long as we are here for each other, as long as we stay true to Jesus, we will meet again as fellow believers in Christ and as citizens of heaven.
