During the past few weeks, our first readings have been from the letters of Paul rather than readings from the Old Testament. Today our reading is from his letter to Philemon. Many Christians probably could not even name this book as a part of the New Testament. It is the shortest of Paul’s letters, not even being organized in chapters, and containing only 355 words in the original Greek. Paul wrote this letter while he was in prison himself, probably in Rome. But Paul is not interested in his own well-being, but rather in the welfare of the runaway slave Onesimus, who was returning to his owner, Philemon. On Paul’s journey, he started out as a prosecutor of Christians, wanting them to be arrested or to be killed. Now he is willing to do anything to spread the Gospel to the world, even to go to prison for the sake of the Gospel.
When I visited the Basilica of St Paul just outside the walls of the ancient city of Rome, I got to see a piece of the chains that enslaved Paul when he was in prison. Paul wrote to so many different Christian communities as their spiritual father. He spent so much time nurturing these Christian communities in the faith. He calls Onesimus his spiritual son in the faith, his own very heart.
For Paul, God was not an ambiguous concept. God is not far away in the heavens. Jesus was his Lord and his Savior, a reality in his daily life. Jesus led Paul to the faith and to salvation. We are called to reach to others in the faith just as Paul did, nurturing them in that same loving way.
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