Wednesday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, September 13, 2023

Colossians 3, 1-11

Brothers and sisters: If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. Because of these the wrath of God is coming upon the disobedient. By these you too once conducted yourselves, when you lived in that way. But now you must put them all away: anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language out of your mouths. Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its Creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.

The worship of the Greek and Roman gods did not require adherence to  doctrine or even morality.  A person offered sacrifices at the appointed times and sometimes prayed to the gods in an emergency.  A convert from  pagan worship had to be taught what to believe and how to act.  In teaching how a believer ought to act it helped to show the connection between believing and acting: the one follows naturally from the other.  In the First Reading of today’s Mass, St. Paul teaches the Gentile Christians living in the Asia Minor city of Colossae how a believer translates his belief in God into action.

“If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”  That is, if you have died with Christ in baptism and been raised with him to new life, you ought to seek the things that pertain to your new life with God and not return to the things from which you have risen.  Seeking these things that are “above” means to see the world for what it is, our temporary dwelling place to which we must not become too attached and also a sign for what is to come: the new earth which the Lord will create along with new heavens (cf. Revelation 21, 1).  But it also means to think about what heaven will be like, what the angels will be like, and the happiness we will enjoy eternally in heaven.  What will it be like to look into the eyes of God?  “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”  By focusing our attention on God and on heaven we will gladly live in accord with the divine will.  “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  One who has been raised from the dead is no longer concerned with the things of this world but with the things of the world which he has entered.  

“When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”  Jesus Christ is our life: he is the way, the truth, the life for those who love him.  When he comes again, he will come not as he did the first time, a helpless infant born in a stable and wrapped in swaddling clothes but in glory on the clouds with the angels, and the just will be gathered to his right hand, sharing in his glory.  “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly.”  Since this is so, how we should strive to live now so that we might be set by the angels at his right!  “Parts” here means “limbs” or “members” of a body and recalls the Lord’s words about cutting off hands and putting out eyes if they cause us to sin (cf. Matthew 5, 29-30).  Paul next lists for the Gentile Christians actions that they are not to engage in.  Before the preaching of the Gospel, many of these seemed to them to be ordinary behavior: “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.”  We note from Paul’s list the sins he knows the Gentiles most frequently commit and which these new Christians must resist as no longer part of their lives.  A better translation of these sins is: “fornication, impurity, lust, evil desires, and covetousness”.  “Because of these the wrath of God is coming upon the disobedient.”  The “disobedient” are those who indulge in these things.  The disobedient will be set at the left hand of Christ at his coming again and will suffer eternal punishment.

Paul gives a second list of sins that must be rejected: “anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language out of your mouths”.  A better translation is: “wrath, angry outbursts, malice, blasphemy (or abusive language, and filthy speech from your mouth”.  “Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its Creator.”  That is, the people of this world engage in lying but you have stripped this off as an old self in baptism and been re-created as a child of heaven, truly in the image and likeness of God, to speak a language of love and peace.

“Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.”  The Greek word translated as “here” actually means “where” so that this sentence is a phrase that completes the previous sentence: “. . . in the image of its Creator, where there is not Greek and Jew . . . but Christ is all and in all.”  That is, before God, we are all equal.  The Jew is not preferred because of he is a descendent of Abraham nor the Greek because of his high culture.  It is the Lord Jesus who saves us all without respect of any extrinsic quality.

Through continual study of the Lord’s teachings we will more easily conform ourselves to him in all things.