Today’s reading from the Letter to the Colossians is very important to me personally as it begins with the verse of Scripture from which the Catholic Union of the Sick in America, an apostolate of which I am the administrator, takes its inspiration. “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body, which is the Church. . .”
Once again, it will take a short lesson in Greek philosophy to understand exactly what St. Paul is saying. The Greek philosophers looked at the travail or pain that a woman in labor experiences when she is ready to deliver her child and formulated a principle that states that every new age in human history was preceded by a period of pain and affliction, some sort of upheaval or revolution or, very often, war.
St. Paul used this philosophical principle as he reflected on the promise that Jesus had made that he would return a second time and would bring with him salvation for the faithful who had placed their trust in him. This new age, the eschaton or Parousia, would be preceded by a period of pain and affliction.
As he preached the Gospel to the people of the world, he suffered for that Gospel. He also witnessed or learned of the suffering that followers of Jesus were experiencing at the hands of those who had persecuted and executed Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles tells us on a number of occasions that the apostles and disciples of Jesus would be filled with gladness when they were made to suffer for their faith because they felt privileged to undergo the same trials as their Lord and Master had undergone before them.
St. Paul combines the Greek philosophy with the sufferings of the Christian community and reasoned that this was the pain that would bring about the second coming of Jesus. This is what he means when he filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. He does not suggest that Jesus did not suffer enough. What he says is that if we unite our sufferings to those of Jesus, we are in fact hastening the day when Jesus will return.
The suffering of Jesus was redemptive in that it won our salvation. The suffering of the disciples of Jesus is redemptive in that it will bring about the day when Jesus returns with the salvation for which we yearn. We have all been told at one time or another “to offer it up” when we encounter pain or hardship. St. Paul would heartily agree – offer it up to hasten the day on which Jesus will return and we will be invited to the heavenly banquet of which we have a foretaste at the table of the Lord and the Eucharist.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M.