STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS: CATHOLIC SUNDAY SCRIPTURE REFLECTIONS: 14TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, CYCLE B, 2021

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

The Christian life is a life of grace in weakness or strength in weakness through God´s grace and mercy. This strength in weakness is the beauty and mystery of our lives in God. St. Paul beautifully puts this clearly on three different occasions in his writings. When he affirms that God´s strength in weakness: “We are like clay jars in which this treasure is stored. The real power comes from God and not from us” (2 Cor. 4:7).

Again, he acknowledges: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Ultimately, he also accepts: “For when I am weak, then I am strong 2 Cor. 12:10). For Paul, it is clear without doubt or reservation that the Christian faith and life are all grace.

Hence, there is strength in weakness at work in us through the grace of God. These human weaknesses are crucial for us (Christians) to learn humility and never remain in self-righteousness or superiority to others.

OUR THEME

The readings of today show and enlighten us on some basic facts of the Christian life, namely that Christ, the prophet, we all face rejection and suffering for our stand with God and the truth. Alongside this rejection and suffering is the struggle with personal weaknesses or defects that may increase our pain and anguish in bearing testimony to Christ and his gospel.

The readings invite us to a life of courage to stand and face our difficulties, hardships, pains, suffering and personal weaknesses. Knowing fully well that God´s grace, strength and power are alive and at work in us. That. There is always strength in weakness for those who remain in Christ despite the general or personal problems and weaknesses they face daily.

FIRST READING. EZEKIEL 2:2-5

God appoints and sends Ezekiel as a prophet on call on the people to repent and to embrace his mercy and grace. Indeed, Prophet Ezekiel was sent to a nation of rebels whose ancestors rebelled and transgressed against God and whose descendants are impudent and stubborn as well.

There is every probability that the current generation would not be learning from the deeds of the fathers. And they will rebel and reject God like their ancestors. So, God prepared Ezekiel beforehand to know and understand that he would stand being rejected or treated badly for his stand with God.

However, it is important, that a prophet of God declared God´s warning message to them despite their rejection and rebellion. Fundamentally, when it comes to the prophetic message or the truth silence or compromise is not an option.

The truth is better told and rejected than to be silenced by cowardice or conformity.  Or the attitude of watering down values and truth in the name of relativity or flexibility. Prophets may or may not be accepted among their people, however, silence is not always the answer. We must speak the truth. We should keep the faith.

Today, we live, in a world of no truth, half-truth or light truth in the name of inclusivity or not hurting anyone. This is not the prophetic life we were called into when receiving our baptism as a prophet like Christ. Or when we were professed as religious or ordained as priests to take the Christian calling to an additional level of commitment.

The most difficult truth for Christendom is that if Christianity is losing its grounds and values. That prevent the Christians from making an impact on the world or souls today. It is just because of the basic fact it has lost grip or touch with the truth of Christ and his gospel.

Prophet Ezekiel was the voice of conscience to the rebellious people of God-Israel. He was anointed by the spirit of God to speak the truth as well as confront the religious and moral decadence of the people. Equally, their rejection of God, his commandments and his prophet

The psalmist in Psalm 123 encourages us to fix our eyes of the grace and mercy of God that brings us peace. When he piously affirms: “Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.” The psalmist: King David knew human weaknesses at all levels and equally knew that, their strength in weakness when God´s grace and mercy abound.

SECOND READING: 2 CORINTHIANS 12:7-10

St. Paul welcomes his “thorn in the flesh,” of human weaknesses, helplessness, defections and failures since God´s “power is made perfect in weakness.” It is strange the experience of Paul. He had this amazing and puzzling experience of faith and the mystical touch of God.

He has this power of God acting in him or with a lot of miraculous signs and wonders, revelation and mystical knowledge, visions and prophetic experience. For God to keep him (Paul) from feeling too proud or full of himself gave him a “thorn in the flesh”. Something that kept Paul from being boastful or proud but rather humble and inadequate in himself.

Interestingly, Paul does not boast of his charisma, power or holiness but his weaknesses, struggles, failures and sufferings. It is a paradoxical and essential message to all Christians that the life we live as humans or as children of God (Christians) is all grace. That is, God´s strength in weakness is what makes us strong, able and worthy to live the Christian life.

Paul also understands that the Christian life in Christ is not a life of extraordinary visions or glorious consolations. Life in Christ in the world means sharing in the cross (Rom. 8:17).

WHAT IS THE THORN IN THE FLESH?

Many biblical scholars or experts have their perspective interpretations of this Paul experience. For some, it means:

1. The thorn means a spiritual temptation. The temptation to doubt and to shirk the duties of the apostolic life. And the sting of conscience when temptation conquered instead of faith in God.
2. It also means, the opposition and persecution, which he had to face. The thorn in the flesh is also a constant battle with the enemies of the gospel of Christ.  Or those who tried undoing his work. The hostility he faced from Jews and Gentiles throughout his missionary endeavour.
3. The thorn in the flesh is interpreted by many Church´s Fathers or biblical scholars metaphorically as Paul´s opponents. Those who vehemently, bitterly and critically oppose him in his apostolic endeavours. St John Chrysostom, “Homilies on 2 Corinthian; 26, 2,” said that the thorn in the flesh of Paul means, “the suffering caused him by all adversaries of the Word of God.
4. It is also taken literally to mean carnal or sexual temptations. His effort to live strictly with the grace of chastity haunted him so much in real or imaginary sexual temptations of sexual fantasies and perversions.

When the early Catholic monks and the hermits shut themselves up in their monasteries and their cells. They also found out that, their last instinct that could not be tamed or controlled was their sexuality. They wished to eliminate it, but it haunted them. It was a widely held notion that Paul had this same inner or internal struggle with his sexuality.

However, these views were disputed by many scholars too. (A) The very word, “stake” or “thorn” indicates an almost savage pain or torment. (B) The whole picture of the thorn in the flesh before us is one of the physical sufferings, which makes him incapable in so many ways to feel handicap. (c) Whatever the thorn in the flesh was, although it sometimes prostrated Paul, it never kept him wholly from his work.

Furthermore, there are other suggestions the thorn in the flesh Paul suffered as a result of his mystical experience was both a spiritual or bodily defect.

• It has been suggested that the thorn was Paul’s physical appearance. “His bodily presence is weak” (2Cor.10:10). It has been suggested that he suffered from some disfigurement that made him ugly and hindered his work. But that does not account for the sheer pain that must have been there.
• One of the commonest solutions is epilepsy. It is painful and recurrent, and between attacks, the sufferer can go about his business. It produced visions and trances such as Paul experienced. It can be repellent; in the ancient world, it was attributed to demons.

In the ancient world when people saw an epileptic they spat to ward off the evil demon. In Gal.4:14 Paul says that when the Galatians saw his infirmity they did not reject him.

The Greek word literally means you did not spit at me. But this theory has consequences, which are difficult to accept. It would mean that Paul’s visions were epileptic trances, and it is difficult to believe that the visions that changed the world were due to epileptic attacks.

• The oldest of all theories is that Paul suffered from severe and prostrating headaches. Both Tertullian and Jerome believed that. His high level of studies, activities and journeys produce the effect of constant and terrible migraines in Paul.
• This may well lead us to the truth or still another theory that Paul suffered from eye trouble. And this would explain the headaches. After the glory on the Damascus Road passed, he was blind (Ac.9:9).

It may be that his eyes never recovered again. Paul said of the Galatians that they would have plucked out their eyes and would have given them to him (Gal.4:15). At the end of Galatians, he writes, “See in what large letters I am writing to you” (Gal.6:11), as if he was describing the great sprawling characters of a man who could hardly see.

• By far, the most likely thing is that Paul suffered from chronically recurrent attacks of a certain virulent malarial fever, which haunted the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. The natives of the country, when they wished to harm an enemy, prayed to their gods that he should be “burned up” with this fever. One who has suffered from it describes the headache that accompanies it as being like “a red-hot bar thrust through the forehead.”

Whatever the thorn meant, it was a torment, and it created a sense of inadequacy and a source of concern or shame to Paul. Hence, Paul prayed that it might be taken from him, but God answered that prayer as he answers so many prayers–he did not take the weakness away but gave Paul the strength to bear it.

That is how God works. He does not spare us things but enables us to conquer them. To Paul showed the promise and reality of the all-sufficient grace. 

Many believe that if grace was involved, then it implicitly implied the thorn is something that must do with human weakness (a habitual sin or defect one´s battle with all through life) on the part of Paul. Secondly, it was a divine intervention meant to keep him humble and to make him more receptive to the weaknesses of others. Above all, it was meant to teach him that life is all grace and nothing more.

Now let us see from Paul´s life some few things for which that grace was sufficient. For Paul, God always gives strength in weakness. This for him was a summary of Christian life grace in human deficiency.

THIS IS SUFFICIENT GRACE IN PAUL

It was sufficient for physical weariness despite all journeys, preaching, teaching, writing, hardships, persecutions, starvation, rejections, beatings, shipwrecks, and imprisonments. That was the work of the all-sufficient grace.

1. It was sufficient for physical pain. It enabled him to bear the cruel stake. It is was grace the holding firm and focus amid many shattering persecutions, waves of abuse and physical violence like shipwrecks etc.
2. It was sufficient for the opposition. All his life Paul was up against it and all his life, and he never gave in. No amount of opposition could break him or make him turn back. That was the work of the all-sufficient grace.
3. It made him able, as all this letter shows, to face slander. There is nothing so difficult to face as misinterpretation and cruel misjudgement. The all-sufficient grace made Paul care not what men thought him to be but what God knew him to be.
4. It is the glory of the gospel that in our weakness we may find this wondrous grace, for always man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. This is the story of the salvation history of mankind cooperating with God´s grace to bring about the fulfilment of God´s Plan.

MY TESTIMONY

The second reading of this Sunday is my most favourite text of Paul´s writings. This is because I identify myself with the text like the summary of my life. I discovered like Paul that my being a Christian, a religious or a priest is all unmerited grace of God.

That is, as a Christian, religious, and priest, my whole life, existence and being is nothing but the grace and mercy of God. I cannot boast or pride myself in anything. Nor do I be ashamed of my failures and weaknesses because I knew the grace of God is sufficient for me.  A precious treasure stored and at work in my earthenware being.

For I know, I can do all things through the one who strengthens me in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:13). Paul had lived through so many hard times, hardships, pains, suffering and personal failures. And human weaknesses knew, affirmed and accepted that life is grace and Christian calling is also grace.

The most honest fact is that every one of us like St Paul, need to acknowledge his or her own “thorn”.  That is, one own complex, shadow, inferior function, the potential for neurotic behaviour; call it what you will, each of us has it!

Today, St. Paul acknowledged his thorn in the flesh and God’s sufficient grace at work in his life and situation. We all have our complex, shadow, inferior function and potential for neurotic behaviour with, which we often reject and rebel against God.

THE GOSPEL: MARK 6:1-6

In the gospel, Christ, the anointed one of God was rejected by his people for being so “common” among them. Yet, it was by the spirit of God he taught with great wisdom worked wonders and demonstrated the immense power

Jesus´ familiarity, commonness or simplicity breeds contempt in the people who knew him and his family in Nazareth. That is, Jesus is rejected by his Nazareth neighbours means, no prophet is honoured in his home town.

Usually, leaving home are sad moments and homecoming are joyous moments of welcome, reunion and joy. However, Jesus´ homecoming in the gospel of today is one of contempt and rejection. This is because of his known or familiar background to his kinsmen and kinswomen. 

They refused to listen to what he had to say or believes the miracles he did in God´s name for two reasons. Their rejection based on frizzing reasons or excuses was a big shock to Jesus Christ. The Bible said; “and he was amazed or dumbfounded at their unbelief.”

(i)                 They said, “Is not the carpenter?”  Or as in other gospels “the son of a carpenter”. The word used for a carpenter is “tekton”.  Now, “tekton” does mean a worker in wood, but it means more than merely a joiner. It means a craftsman who builds ships, houses, and temples.

In the old days, and still today in many places, there could be found in little towns and villages a craftsman who would build you anything from a chicken-coop to a house.

The kind of man who could build a wall, mend a roof, repair a gate. The craftsman or the handyman with few or no instruments.  And with the simplest tools could turn his hand to any job.

That is what Jesus was like. He was a working man or a labourer who did menial works for sustenance. But the point is that the people of Nazareth despised Jesus because he was a working man. He was a man of the people, a commoner or a layman, a simple man with no significance or importance attached to him or his status.  Therefore, they despised him.

(ii)               Secondly, they said, “Is not this Mary’s son? Do we not know his brothers and sisters?” They did not only see him grow among them as the poor carpenter. They also knew about his background. His family was no noble, high status religiously, socially or economically. It was just a simple ordinary family of Nazareth.

They called Jesus Mary’s son, tells us that Joseph must have been dead. Therein we have the key to one of the enigmas of Jesus’ life. Jesus was only thirty-three when he died; and yet he did not leave Nazareth until he was thirty. (Lk.3:23.)

Why this long delay? Why this lingering in Nazareth while a world waiting to be saved? The reason was that Joseph died young and Jesus took upon himself the support of his mother and his brothers and sisters. And only when they were old enough to fend for themselves did he go forth. He was faithful in little, and therefore in the end God gave him much to do.

The people of Nazareth despised and picked offence in Jesus because of his status or simplicity of personality and as well as that of his family. There are many lessons we learn from the reaction and rejection of the people of Nazareth toward Jesus Christ. Even, when they knew he left Nazareth as a carpenter and returned as a teacher and a healer.

THE LESSONS AND IMPLICATIONS

1. We must always and where beware or conscious of the temptation to evaluate men or women from externals and incidentals. And not by native worth as a person.
2. The people of Nazareth thought they knew Jesus. The image they had of him, which they held on to with great tenacity, became a block to their learning more about him. We too can easily assume that we know someone, when, in reality, we only know one side to them. We can form strong opinions about people based on past experiences. We can become so attached to these opinions that even when the evidence is there to challenge them, we are completely unmoved.
3. There was more to Jesus than the people of Nazareth were aware of. Indeed, there is always more to every human being than we are aware of. That is true even of those we would claim to know well, such as family members and good friends. We are each made in the image and likeness of God. And there is a profound mystery of life in which each one of us is uniquely born. We can never fully probe into the mystery of another person life.
4. We each need to approach everyone with the awareness that there is more here than I can see. It was Jesus’ very ordinariness that made it difficult for the people of Nazareth to ascertain him as he was, in all his mystery. God was powerfully present to them in and through someone as ordinary, in many respects, as they. God continues to come to us today in and through the simple things of life. In and through those who are most familiar to us. In the religious sphere, there can be a strange fascination with the extraordinary and the unusual.
5. The gospels suggest that the primary way the Lord comes to us is in and through the everyday event of lives. This is what we mean by the incarnation. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. The ordinary is shot through with God’s presence.
6. In the gospel, we also hear the opinions of religious rulers and authorities through the crowd who rejected Christ and were hostile to him. How often out of envy and jealousy, do we use our power and authority to defame others image and reputation or instigate the crowd against them.
7. The crowd and their religious rulers did not only reject Christ base on his person or family background. They were also envious of Christ gifts and talents, his wisdom, healing power, eloquence to preach or teach as well as the likeable personality that attracts all to him.
8. The result of their rejections, unbelief and pricking offence in Jesus’ personality and family background was that Jesus could do no mighty works in Nazareth. The atmosphere was wrong, and some things cannot be done unless the atmosphere is right.
9. It is still true that no man can be healed if he refuses to be healed. Faith and belief in God are perquisites for God´s healing up us. Jesus could not do what he did in other places because of the lack of faith and unbelief.
10. There can be no preaching in the wrong atmosphere. Jesus could not bring himself to preach or teach them about the kingdom of God. The atmosphere of the synagogue of Nazareth was one of critical coldness, rejections, and bland indifference. Even, the most Spirit-packed utterance can fall lifeless to the earth in such hostility, rejection or indifference.
11. Our churches could also be many at times a place of hostility, rejection and indifference when we allow ourselves to be conditioned by the political, social, ecclesial, religious or economic status of those who minister or help our churches.  
12. There can be no peace-making in the wrong atmosphere. Jesus could not lead them to communion with God, something he does in every town or place he went to. He brings individuals as well as communities to embrace God´s purpose and plan for them.
13. The fact stands that, if men have come together to hate, they will hate. If they have come together to refuse to understand, they will misunderstand. If they have also come together to see no other perspective but their own, they will see no other.
14. Just as, if they have come together, loving Christ and seeking to love each other, even those who are most widely separated can come together in him.

In a nutshell, there a tremendous responsibility that is laid on each one of us. That is, we can either help or hinder the work of Jesus Christ.

We can open the door wide to him by becoming or making ourselves instruments of his kingdom, grace, peace and mercy in a world full of hostilities, rejections and indifference. That is to be the prophet prophets or messengers of God. Even despite our weaknesses like Paul so that the grace of God can be sufficient for us. That we might experience each day of lives God´s strength in weakness.

Or we can due to our arrogance or wickedness of hearts, slam to God´s face the experience of his grace, peace and mercy in our weaknesses as humans. That is, allowing our prejudices, hostilities, rejections or indifferences to prevent us or others from becoming God´s instruments or channels of grace in the world and among men.

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

Do you live up to your prophetic nature as Christ the prophet with whom you were baptized as a prophet? Or do you play eye service or lips service to your Christian commitments as a prophet?

What are your weaknesses or struggles in life whether spiritually or humanely? Do you see or feel God´s sufficient grace in your weaknesses or failures or the habitual sins you struggle or battle in your spiritual journey of faith?

What are your reactions to God´s messages or messengers? Do you hate, reject, or act indifferent to the message of God because of the messengers?

Do we allow hatred, jealousy, envy, or bitterness to dominate us because others are more gifted or spiritual endowments than us? To be hostile, critical, or indifferent to them and instigate others to reject them?

Do we judge people based on their background, affluence, intelligence, history or past? 

When you face hostilities, rejections, or indifferences because of your stand with God, the truth or the gospel values? Do you conform or compromise your values and principles? Or do you stand firm and tall despite rejections, threats, or pain?

The call today to us all as Catholics is that we must be ready to stand up and be counted for the values and principles we hold dear. Prophet may or may not be accepted among their people, but silence is not always the answer. We need to speak out the truth without fear or favour of anyone. We need to admit to the truth and nothing but the truth. We must keep the faith despite all odds and challenges.

OUR PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, despite our struggles, weaknesses, sufferings and pains, you remind us with assurance through St Paul that your grace is sufficient for our helplessness. Help us acknowledge and accept our thorn to feel Christ saving power, mercy, and grace over us. And may we come to know the strength in weakness through the grace of God, for when we are weak, then we are strong. Amen!