During this Jubilee Year of the Apostle Paul I committed myself to preach every Sunday on the second reading, from Paul’s letters. Today we enter into Romans, Chapter 9, one of three chapters dealing with the greatest heartbreak of Paul: that most Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah.
To help us make a practical connection between ourselves and Paul’s dilemma, let me translate today’s second reading into our own context.
“Brothers and sisters: I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie; my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I would be dammed to hell and cut off from Christ for the sake of my parishioners who have fallen away from the Church. They are the Church, theirs is the baptismal dignity of being sons and daughters of God, theirs is the glory of being beloved by God, theirs is the forgiveness found in the new and everlasting covenant, theirs is the Sermon on the Mount, theirs is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, theirs is the promise of heaven, theirs are the apostles, the martyrs and all the saints who have done God’s will throughout the ages, theirs is the Mother of God, Mary most holy, and from her, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”
Paul’s greatest grief was that a very large majority of his kinsmen would not come to faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. How could this be? God had chosen the Chosen People to be the people from whom would come the Christ, the Messiah, who would transform the world and save the human race. How could it be that so many rejected Him?
Has it not happened in our own times as well, that many of the people God had chosen to be His own have walked away? Is it not true that many of God’s chosen ones, who were allowed early previews into heaven by means of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist, have walked away and no longer accompany us along life’s sacramental, pilgrim road to heaven?
This great sorrow and constant anguish on Paul’s part does not come from his not getting his way with other people. This reaction of Paul’s does not come from wanting other people to do what he thought they should do. No. Paul’s sorrow and anguish came from a sure and certain love of Christ and grasp of what the love of God does for us in Christ. It was a sorrow and anguish that God’s greatest gift to the human race was rejected by the very people who should rejoice over Him. It also came from a profound love for his kinsmen because they willingly chose to miss the target with what they were being invited to.
In these 3 chapters of Romans Paul will treat the reason why his kinsmen rejected Christ, and the same will apply to our loved ones. Next Sunday we will be given the sure and certain confidence that God does not withdraw his promise to the Chosen People. “The gifts and call of God,” Paul will say, “are irrevocable.” This will be next Sunday’s message of hope that we can have regarding our loved ones who have abandoned the Table of the Lord. That’s next week.
Today’s selection from Romans 9 is not about why they don’t believe, or what will happen to them. Today’s selection has this purpose for us: to challenge us to care, even to the point of anguish.
Settling for a shrug and an indifferent attitude of, “well, everyone has to find their own way,” is unbecoming of someone who is passionately in love with God and the Church He gave us.
Is Jesus so important to us that anyone’s “not getting it” is a source of sorrow for us? Are the sacraments so valuable to us that others, who used to celebrate the sacraments and now don’t, are like spiritual black holes of profound absence among us, their brothers and sisters? Is our Catholic faith so meaningful to us that seeing a loved one’s falling away is like losing a hand or a foot? Is our love for the Lord and the Church and for our loved ones so strong, that we too could wish to be cursed if that would help them find their way?
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