Up until today’s passage from the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul has spoken of the hope and encouragement that this community has given him, of his joy in the fact that the Gospel has been preached by his disciple Epaphras, and, using a hymn sung by that community, waxed eloquently about the preeminence of Jesus Christ. Today’s verses reveal part of the motive that St. Paul had in writing to this community with which he has had no previous connection other than through his disciple. He tells them that they will be rewarded by God for their faith “provided that you persevere in the faith, firmly grounded, stable, and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard. . .”
Apparently Epaphras had written to St. Paul because the community of Colossae had been approached by missionaries that had tried to undermine St. Paul’s preaching. They would wait until St. Paul had moved on and then would enter the community and begin to preach their own version of the Gospel, contradicting St. Paul’s teaching that faith in Jesus justified all men and women, even the Gentiles. These missionaries were called “Judaizers.” They were Jewish Christians who taught that to be a Christian, one had to first be a Jew who had been circumcised and who obeyed the Jewish dietary laws. Now that St. Paul was in prison and no longer able to preach, they turned their efforts toward the communities that had been converted by St. Paul’s disciples.
We no longer live with this kind of thinking. No one preaches that a Christian must be first a Jew before being baptized in the Lord Jesus. However, that does not mean that Christians are not beset by others who would corrupt the Gospel and lead them astray. Vigilance in the preservation of our faith is still necessary and warranted. Threats to the faith come from all sorts of splinter groups and people who are threatened by change.
So we too must heed the message that St. Paul sends to the Colossians. We must persevere in the faith. We are to be firmly grounded in the Gospel way of life even as it clashes with the culture and society in which we live. Our times are no different than those of the many different eras through which the Church has passed. False prophets and false teachers are simply a part of our history and a part of our present.
When we gather around the table of the Lord, we always do so in the context of listening to the Gospel and to the faith that has been handed down to us by the apostles and the magisterium of the Church. Let those who have ears, hear.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator