Today you are celebrating me!
Dear People of St. Boniface,
Today you are celebrating me!
Well no, you are not. You are celebrating Jesus Christ, and how he “captured me” even though I was a persecutor of Christians. At one point I even called myself an “abortion” [1 Cor 15:8] because of who I was – a being as good as dead. And yet I was called.
And today we are once again in Corinth! After I had first been in Corinth, I went across the Aegean to Ephesus. My companion Timothy then came down to Corinth from northern Greece, found that things were in a bad way because of false teaching and, unable to solve the problem, summoned me – a fine dangerous sea journey at short notice! And I am afraid my second visit did not go well. Maybe I had been provocative saying I would come “with a whip” [1 Cor 4:21] because on my arrival to be honest my enemies got the better of me [2 Cor 10:1] and I had to stage a tactical retreat, having been gravely insulted by one person whom I prefer not to name [2 Cor 2:5].
My enemies were Jewish converts like me, rather ‘flashy’ ones, it must be said [2 Cor 10:7]. They accused me of being uneducated – as if anybody who had studied at Gamaliel’s School in Jerusalem could be a half-wit! So back in Ephesus and licking my wounds I wrote the words you read today, in a mixture of love, sadness and defiance. While these pseudo-teachers were exercising their superficial charm, just look what I had been going through: what a roll-call of suffering! I don’t like to boast about it, but it is true.
Fortunately my words had an effect and stirred the Corinthians’ conscience, and with the fine work of my friend Titus [2 Cor 7:13ff,] my status was restored at last.
I only went to Corinth once more, when I passed through [2 Tim 4:20] on my prison-journey to Rome. And that is my story!
My blessing, from Heaven, PAUL.