Tuesday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, September 12, 2023

The Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Colossians 2, 6-15

Brothers and sisters: As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted in him and built upon him and established in the Faith as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one captivate you with an empty, seductive philosophy according to the tradition of men, according to the elemental powers of the world and not according to Christ.  For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the Cross; despoiling the principalities and the powers, he made a public spectacle of them, leading them away in triumph by it.

The First Reading for today’s Mass continues with the Letter of St. Paul to the Colossians.  In today’s Reading, Paul exhorts these new Gentile Christians to hold fast to the Lord Jesus and what they have been taught about him: “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted in him and built upon him and established in the Faith as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”  He speaks of them “receiving” Jesus himself as though he had physically come among them and they had welcomed him, so real is his presence through grace, his words, and the Holy Eucharist.  “Walk in him”, not merely alongside him, but through baptism they are made members of his Body and in this union they can indeed walk “in him”, “rooted” in him, as an oak is rooted into the ground.  They are built on him as a sire foundation, which recalls for us the Lord’s words in Matthew 7, 24: “Every one therefore who hears these my words, and does them shall be likened to a wise man who built his house upon a rock.”  And they should do this “abounding in thanksgiving” unto the God who planned for their salvation from before time began.

“See to it that no one captivate you with an empty, seductive philosophy according to the tradition of men, according to the elemental powers of the world and not according to Christ.”  St. Paul at the same time warns them not to pay any attention to the cults that were moving into their region from the east.  These were the various gnostic groups.  These taught that there was a supreme and remote deity and that the material world was created by a lesser, evil deity.  After death, the soul is reincarnated to live on earth again.  This cycle repeats until the soul attains enlightenment, at which point the soul is saved and enters into the presence of the remote supreme god.  Many people in ancient times and later found these ideas very attractive.  Eventually it assumed the Lord Jesus into its plan of salvation.

“For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power.”  St. Paul contrasts the Gnostic belief that physical matter is evil with the fact that the Son of God was made incarnate and possesses a human nature.  Those who are baptized in him are joined to him as members of his Body.  And this is no lesser god, but the one true God “who is the head of every principality and power” — two of the choirs of angels.  “In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ.”  The question of whether the Gentiles should be circumcised (making them Jews) before baptizing them lingered among certain groups of Jewish Christians and Gentiles even wondered this themselves, as though they could only become fully Christian by first becoming Jews.  Here Paul reminds them that baptism far exceeds any benefit that circumcision could render, for the former changed a person spiritually while the latter changed him only physically.  “You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”  Baptism means a real death and a real re-creation of a person as an adopted child of Almighty God through being joined to his Son.  In the water or with the water poured on the one to receive the sacrament the person dies but is instantaneously re-created and rendered capable of eternal life.  “And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.”  Sin destroys the life of God in the soul, so how much more dead those who sin and have no life of God in their souls.  But the Lord did not demand any kind of perfection in those who were to be baptized.  He took them as they were, Gentiles and sinners, and brought them to life conformed to his own Resurrection from the dead.

“Obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.”  The Lord does not hide his eyes from our sins and allow us into heaven despite them.  He “obliterates” them, wiping them out so that our souls are no more affected by them than if we had never sinned in the first place.  He “nails them to his Cross” so that they die there, slain by him as he died to set us free.  “Despoiling the principalities and the powers, he made a public spectacle of them, leading them away in triumph by it.”  The fallen angels reformed their choirs in hell so that those who were principalities and powers in heaven remained so, but in the devil’s domain.  Christ makes them a public spectacle in the way that captured enemy soldiers were paraded through Ancient Rome, to the rejoicing of the good angels.  He “leads them away”, that is, he severely restricts their power in the world to those only who give themselves over to sin.

Recalling all that the Lord has done for us in conquering sin by his suffering and Death and making us his members helps us as much as the Colossians Christians to keep the Lord’s commandments, to remain rooted in him so that when he comes again he will find us flourishing, as “a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper” (Psalm 1, 3).

The celebration of The Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary was instituted by Pope Innocent XI by commemorate the Christian victory over the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1693.  The victory saved Western 

Europe at the time and began the gradual rollback of the Turks from Europe. Prior to the battle, King John Sobieski of the Poles placed his army under the protection of the Blessed Virgin.  In the reform of the calendar after Vatican II the feast was removed, but it was restored by Pope John Paul II as an optional memorial.