Homily for Saturday
31st Week of Ordinary
Time
Nov. 5, 2022
Phil 4: 10-19
Provincial House, New
Rochelle, N.Y.
“I have learned, in whatever situation I find
myself, to be self-sufficient” (Phil 4: 11).
When I went to my laptop last nite to type this—reading 2 pages of longhand scribble would’ve been a chore—I discovered that 2 years ago I preached here on this same reading. But I assure you that I haven’t looked at that homily, and I’m sure there isn’t much resemblance between them.
In one of my commentaries on Philippians, I
placed a news clipping from October 2005[1]
about a teenaged girl who’d been displaced by Katrina from New Orleans to
Montclair, N.J. She and her family had
lost everything in the storm and been given shelter with relatives. Atho she told the reporter, “New Jersey is
boring,” they received aid in various forms, including tuition assistance from
a Catholic high school and a free school uniform. This teen girl had been planning for high
school homecoming—with all the hoopla that only the Crescent City can offer,
I’m sure—and had just purchased but not yet picked up her class ring. Now, a month later, she’d gained a whole
different perspective on what was important:
“The little things don’t matter compared with not having anything.”
Paul’s conversion to Christ gave him a new
perspective—not only on material things like food and security but also on the
life of the spirit. “I know indeed how
to live in humble circumstances” (4:12).
All that’s really important is to possess the “glorious riches in Christ
Jesus” (4:19). St. Charles Borromeo said
that in different words: “Take care to
pass thru temporal things in such a way as not to lose things eternal.”[2]
Paul spoke of being “self-sufficient”
(4:11). He meant that in a material
sense; elsewhere he boasts of supporting himself with his own hands, paying his
own way on his travels and in his stays in the various cities where he preached
the Gospel “free of charge” (Acts 18:3; 2 Cor 11:7; 1 Cor 9:18).
But Paul also knows he’s not totally
“self-sufficient.” “I have the strength
for everything thru him who empowers me”; or in a translation we may be more
familiar with, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (4:13). He can manage hunger or abundance, dangerous
travel or good companionship, and persecution, because Christ is with him and
bears him up.
Still, he appreciates and accepts human
support: “It was kind of you to share in
my distress” (4:14). He is, after all,
writing from prison. Brotherly support
from his friends is a comfort, and it cheers him up: “I rejoice greatly in the Lord that now at
last you revived your concern for me” (4:10).
In 2 Timothy, another letter that purports to come from an imprisonment,
he laments that all his co-workers except Luke have left him for one reason or
another (4:9-13). So now a visit from
Epaphroditus, a message from distant friends, and some material assistance are
more than welcome. Put this also in the
context of imprisonment in the ancient world—well into modern times, in fact—that
prisoners relied heavily on what family and friends brought them for food,
clothing, and other supplies, jail fare and clothing being notoriously scanty in
both quantity and quality and jailers often corrupt.
My 1st year of practical training was really
hard; not quite prison-like, altho we weren’t allowed off the property except
for a serious reason; and that year included the infamous case of the
director-principal trying to fire one of the clerics, and the vice provincial
having to fly in and make an intervention.
There was a real division in the community between the senior SDBs and
the others; the clerics (4 of us) were treated like peons. We were saved by our sticking together and by
the support of 3 of the younger priests, including John Blanco. (Yes, John was once a young priest! I think he was 7 years ordained at that
time.) By God’s grace, I had a very
different experience of community in my 2d and 3d years of practical training.
Mutual support gives comfort and strength—to
Paul in prison, to us when life beats us up somehow and throws at us challenges
personal or communal. May what we offer
to one another, singly and collectively, be for us as brothers “a fragrant
aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God” (4:18), and may God “fully
supply whatever” we need (4:19) to live our Christian and Salesian vocations.
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