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“[Baptism] is not a removal of dirt from the body
but an appeal to God for a clear conscience,
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
(1 Peter 3:22)
The Church calls Lent a “holy” season, a time for repentance which
renews our faith and its practice. For that renewal to come about,
we need time to deepen our understanding of and need for God. These
forty days are the time each year we do just that. We seek to
deepen our understanding of God. We also seek to deepen our need for
God. In this way, we translate what St. Peter writes, “[Baptism] is
not a removal or dirt from the body,” into a way of life through
which we make “an appeal to God for a clear conscience” (1 Peter
3:22).
All too many people look upon sin as if it were dirt—something that
“dirties” the soul—as a reason to explain why they do not deepen their
understanding of and need for God. Looking at the fact that sin
seems to be part-and-parcel of human life—after all, the fact is
that none of us escapes sin in this life—many people believe they
are too “dirty” and, thus, they don’t take any time out of their
very busy daily schedules to consider how desperately God loves them
with an immeasurable, eternal love. What these people lose out
on—and what is vital for human life—is how God’s love provides the
strength and insight needed to make “an appeal to God for a clear
conscience” by renewing their faith and its
practice in daily life.
Notice that St. Peter does not write “with a clear
conscience” but “for a clear conscience.” None of us
possess a clear conscience, for we have all sinned. But, each of us
can make an appeal to God for a clear conscience, because we have
been baptized―not
“cleansed” but “elected” by God―so
that we might
partake in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So, this holy season of Lent, let’s reflect upon how the fact that
we have sinned has not driven God’s love out of our lives. Quite
the opposite! Let’s reflect instead about how the fact that we have
sinned is how we choose to keep God’s love from giving us the strength and
insight we need to turn away from sin, to make an appeal to God for
a clear conscience, and to renew faith as well as its
practice in our daily lives. If we were to use these forty days to be this honest with ourselves and to
admit our need for and dependence upon God, we would be
well-prepared to celebrate Easter Sunday, for God will grant us a
clear conscience in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You might recall that St. Paul wrote the Corinthians about how “a
thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet
me, lest I be exalted above measure” (2 Corinthians 12:7).
Whatever the affliction, St. Paul’s description indicates it was
considerably troubling for him to bear. Furthermore, this repeated or sustained
experience causing St. Paul distress was so personally humiliating
that he prayed God to take it away: “Concerning this thing I pleaded
with the Lord three times that it might depart from me” (2
Corinthians 12:8). Yet, pray as sincerely and as often as he did
the God remove this humiliating thorn,
the answer St. Paul received was neither what he wanted to hear nor
what he expected to hear. “And [the Lord] said to me,” St. Paul
wrote, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made
perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Although St. Paul desperately desired to pull this thorn from his
flesh under his own power, St. Paul discovered that he was utterly
incapable of doing so. In fact, his prayer was prompted by the
futility St. Paul experienced as he desperately tried to make
himself holy. St. Paul had already been baptized, yet as he tried
to live out his baptismal commitment, St. Paul continued to sin.
Taking time to contemplate his inability to live a holy life
strictly by his willing it, St. Paul learned how God’s grace
actually works and what this meant in terms of St. Paul’s life and
growth in holiness. What did St. Paul learn? It was in St. Paul’s
weakness not in his strength that God revealed the
power of grace.
To
think a “Super-Apostle” like St. Paul needed to take time to deepen
his understanding of and need for God seems counter-intuitive. We
may be tempted to think St. Paul was a “Super-Apostle” (because he
did everything God asked) and believe, in turn, we should be just
like St. Paul. Yet, St. Paul testifies that it took some time—for he pleaded with the Lord to take away this
“thorn” at least three times—to learn what he needed to learn, that is, if he was going
to deepen his understanding of and need for God to become that “Super-Apostle”
God intended St. Paul to be. St. Paul doesn’t
tell us the time interval between those three prayers, but it’s
quite likely it wasn’t a couple of seconds. So, if
it took St. Paul time to learn this following his baptism, why
should we believe ourselves to be any different?
In
his testimony, St. Paul reminds us it is in the cells and sinews of
our flesh where we have sinned that divine power is made perfect
through imperfection. This insight, the fruit of contemplation and
prayer (of taking time out of a busy daily schedule to contemplate
how desperately God loves us and our need for God), provided St.
Paul everything he needed to understand and to live out his personal
vocation as a Super-Apostle. For St. Paul, understanding that he did not need to make
himself perfect in order for God to love him became the key opening
for St. Paul numerous doors to spiritual growth that otherwise would
have remained closed. So much so that St. Paul discovered this
insight sustaining him in every sort of suffering and misfortune.
Again, he wrote the Corinthians: “Therefore most gladly I will
rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest
upon me….I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in
persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak,
then I am strong” (12:9-10).
For St. Paul, and for us, “the power of Christ” was not some nice
theory or abstract theological speculation. No, it was an insight
learned in the painful experience of his mortal body, as St. Paul
incorporated that experience into his prayer. Then, integrating
that insight into how he lived his life each day, St. Paul’s
“weakness”—let’s call it what it is, the effect of “sin”—became the basis not only
of how the power of Christ changed how St. Paul but also the content
of what God inspired St. Paul to write.
Think about it: in those areas of our daily lives where we find
ourselves incapable of overcoming sin, St. Paul argues, this is
precisely where we can become strong. The challenge to us, of
course, is to believe that God loves us even in our sin and it is
through God’s grace in our weakness that we are made strong. When it
comes to being holy, spouses are weak, parents are weak, young
people are weak, and priests are weak. In fact, all of us are
weak. We cannot make ourselves strong simply by willing it. We
must boast in our weakness—admit what our sin reveals about us—so God’s grace can
transform our weakness into strength.
Over the past two centuries, theologians and biblical scholars have
offered endless conjectures concerning the exact nature of St.
Paul’s “thorn.”
One conjecture is that it was physical. Some have argued that St.
Paul’s weakness as an actual, literal thorn that somehow lodged
itself in St. Paul’s flesh and was festering there; perhaps
poisoning his body. Many scholars are convinced St. Paul’s
affliction was epilepsy or a number of other bodily ailments, for
example, a persistent earache or headache; a speech impediment;
sciatica; or, rheumatism. One, more outlandish but entirely plausible
explanation is that the thorn was a common yet very painful disease
of the eyes found in Middle Eastern countries called trachoma. This
disease is acute, disfiguring, and incapacitating, perhaps
originating from the blinding glare of the light which flashed
around St. Paul on the road to Damascus, and accompanied, as that
most humiliating disease usually is, by occasional “cerebral
excitement” (for example, uncontrollable outbursts and fits). Yet, others have
offered that the thorn was sexual lust, that is, St. Paul was not
able to control his sexual passions and desperately wanted to.
Perhaps our weakness is physical. It afflicts us and keeps us from
being a holy person, for we are too weak to withstand our “thorn in
the flesh.” As a consequence, we act as the person we don’t want to
be. But, we feel powerless to put an end to this weakness. “Surely
God can’t love me if I can’t control myself,” we convince ourselves.
Shame compounds our feelings of failure in our attempts to be holy.
A
second conjecture is that St. Paul’s thorn was psychological. Some
scholars believe it may simply have been Paul’s less-than-impressive
physical appearance. Still others believe his thorn may have been
melancholia, hysteria, or even depression. It has also been
suggested by some that St. Paul’s thorn was a personal struggle with
an explosive temper. In other words, St. Paul had anger management
issues. Some believe the thorn was arrogance, causing St. Paul
to boast while, at the same time, to offend others.
Perhaps our weakness is psychological. Try as we might, events
cause us to see our lives and perhaps the entire world as dark and
depressing. Try to shake this attitude as we might, we can’t and
this impotence only makes us feel worse. “God must be tired of
all my
lame excuses and failure. Surely God doesn’t love me,” we convince
ourselves.
In
the end, we simply do not know the exact nature of St. Paul’s
“thorn in the flesh.” We don’t even know if it was literal or
figurative. Thus, any speculation is just that—speculation—and what
his thorn actually was, is unimportant, if not irrelevant. Why? As
we enter into the holy season of Lent, we should refuse to guess
about things we do not and cannot know. Instead, we should seek to
understand better what the term meant to St. Paul and what it can
mean for us. Then, we may develop a better understanding of God and
our need for God and, as a consequence, be able to appeal to God for a
clear conscience and leave behind our feelings of failure, guilt,
and shame.
Because St. Paul suffered from that thorn, we know for certain that
St. Paul experienced much sorrow. Whether it was physical,
emotional, or spiritual, we do not know. Unable to overcome and
remove that thorn, St. Paul believed God could not love and be
present to St. Paul. In this sense, the thorn provided St. Paul all
the “evidence” he needed to conclude that, because he could not make
himself “holy,” God could not possibly love St. Paul. Where St.
Paul had it all wrong—the conversion of mind (metanoia, in
Greek) St. Paul needed to experience—was that St. Paul believed he
had to perfect himself in a way that God would then love St.
Paul.
In this, St. Paul has much to teach us this Lent, if we consider what St. Paul wants us to hear God teaching us, as God
taught St. Paul through his “thorn in the flesh.”
Looking back at our lives which have brought us to where we are
today, there is likely much we believe “dirties” our souls. But, St. Paul
reminds us that sin should drive us to, not from,
God. Sin provides us, as it did for St. Paul, the basis for prayer,
to plea to God not to relieve us from our afflictions—no,
that’s the easy way out—but to appreciate how “My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (2
Corinthians 12:9). Realizing that we have sinned and will continue
to do so no matter how hard we try, we can focus only upon failure—our
“thorns”—as St. Paul did. But, then, we fail to learn how
desperately God loves us and that we must rely upon God’s grace and
not our own efforts to perfect ourselves. After all, when we trust
in our own strength, we don’t trust in God’s grace.
For sure, St. Paul’s thorn kept him “grounded” in the truth that he
was a human being who needed God, not a human being whom God
needed. “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me,” St. Paul
wrote. “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults,
with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's
sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
God’s grace proved sufficient for St. Paul and is sufficient for
each of us and in every circumstance in our lives. Trusting in
ourselves only deprives us of the true source of our
strength! If we must boast, then let us boast in God, and the good
God accomplishes through us, who, as sinners, are a “pencil in God’s
hand,” as Mother Teresa once commented. Rejoicing in his weakness,
St. Paul could also rejoice in being counted so worthy to be of
service to God. So should we.
To
understand God better and our need for God this holy season of Lent,
let us first remember that God has created each of us to accomplish
great things and has blessed us richly so that we might achieve
those great things. St. Paul reminds us there is a danger in this
because we could dupe ourselves into believing that all of those
great things are our achievements not God’s plan being brought to
fulfillment through us. That’s the sin of pride. But, St. Paul
“thorn in the flesh” reminds us of another way we can dupe
ourselves. When our sin persists, we convince ourselves that God
has not heard us because God has already abandoned us and wants
nothing to do with us. In short, God no longer loves us. That’s
the sin of despair.
At
the beginning of this holy season of Lent, St. Paul reminds us that
those “thorns” can actually help us to understand God better as well
as our need for God. Afflicted by sin in our flesh, we can learn
that God is the true and only source of our strength.
We can also learn that God has a divine purpose for each of us.
Lastly, we can learn that, plead all we want for God to remove those
thorns, it will not be until we accept the fact that we are sinners
who need God’s grace that God will transform those thorns into a
source of strength, as God did with St. Paul.
As St. Peter reminds us in today’s
epistle, baptism did not remove dirt from our souls, but made it
possible for us to make an appeal to God for a clear conscience.
What is the lesson St. Paul wants us to learn this holy season of Lent so
that we can appeal to God for a clear conscience? Whatever or
whoever your “thorn in the flesh” may be, take comfort for God says:
“My grace is sufficient for you!”
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HOMILY
