St Callistus has a very interesting story. He was born into slavery in the Roman Empire. After he escaped slavery, he found himself in the service of Pope Victor around the year 199 AD. He served under several popes and was eventually ordained a deacon. He was put in charge of one of the catacombs where the Christians were buried in Rome; that place is called the Catacomb of St Callistus. In the year 217 AD, when the current pope died, he was chosen as successor. He is said to have been a diligent evangelist, converting and baptizing many prominent citizens of Rome, including soldiers and senators, many of whom later died as martyrs. Like many Church leaders in that era, St Callistus was martyred during a series of persecutions around the year 223 AD.
In our reading from his letter to the Galatians today, St Paul gives us a list of how the ways of the world can lead us away from the Gospel through things such as envy, idolatry, selfishness, and jealousy. We can give way to temptation; we can give we to our humanness, our weaknesses, and our demons, going down a path that leads us to sin and away from God. Yet, through God’s mercy and compassion, through the power of Christ’s cross and resurrection, we can come back to the faith, to conversion and repentance.
St Paul calls us to live according to God’s grace working in our lives rather than by our human desires and human self-interest, rather than a rigid legalistic view of the practice of our faith. As I mentioned in my homily last weekend, it is God’s grace that will help us and lead us and guide us on our journey faith, to God’s will and his calling for us in our lives.
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