Letting off steam
Dear People of St. Boniface,
Back to my Second Readings today, and we have a nice list of 15 ways of behaving badly, framed by sex and drink. Typical!
My letter to the Galatians is famously my ‘letting-off-steam’ letter, and I would not seek to deny it. I went to these people, in the district round Ankara in Turkey, twice, the second time hurrying through en route to Europe. At the time I was having a lot of trouble with my eyesight, and they were very kind to me [Galatians 4:15]. I made converts for Christ, some being Jews, the majority Gentiles.
But then it all went sour: some other preachers arrived on my heels and told them I had got it all wrong. The converts, they said, had to accept the Law of Moses, the Jewish Law. These preachers also pointed to the fact that some of the Galatians were living immorally (as per my list), and said that this would not happen if they were following the Jewish Law.
Now I had to admit that many of them were behaving badly – not helped by other teachers who taught them: “Christ has made you free, so do what you like!” – but the last thing they needed was the Jewish Law. I was not suggesting that the Jewish faith actually made people slaves, but I was saying that these people were not Jews, and did not need to become so.
What they needed was to live by the Spirit, as I had already told them. The Spirit would give them freedom, but freedom with responsibility. In fact, if they properly accepted the Spirit, they would not only be Christians, they would be Christ! [Galatians 5:4].
At the end of this letter I famously took the pen from my secretary and signed my name in huge letters – PAUL – not just because of my eyes, but because I, not the others, had given them the true Gospel!
My blessing, from Heaven, PAUL.