OUR SUNDAY’S IN SEPTEMBER 2010

We will be reading from Paul’s First Letter to Timothy for three weeks, then we will read from Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy for four weeks. These two letters, along with Paul’s Letter to Titus, are called the Pastoral Epistles because they are written to pastors within the Church. The first Letter of Timothy instructs Timothy on his duties as a Pastor of a local community, a new kind of role with responsibility for teaching and guarding the accuracy of other teachers.

Some in the community had taught things that were way off track, and Timothy was being told what to correct. We should note the very thing that Timothy had to straighten out was what we would call “doctrine”, and that was that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

What is tough for us is that our culture has worked hard to remove a sense of personal responsibility and, as a consequence, we have lost a sense of sin. We tend to relativize everything saying, “It’s not that bad,” or, “I’m really a good person. God will overlook my sins.” At times, we don’t even use the word “sin.” We speak of “mistakes.” We excuse our behavior. So many things are someone else’s fault. Parents blame teachers for their children’s misbehavior. Priests speak of how many who come to confession spend most of the time speaking of how others have hurt them, rather than telling their own sins and how they have hurt others.

If Christ’s purpose was to save sinners, then we had better be in touch with our sinfulness, but we must look squarely at our sins to see how much we need the gift of forgiveness. How can we repent if we don’t think we need to? Paul speaks of himself as a very grave sinner. He acknowledges shame that he had persecuted the Church.Only in looking at how terrible his unbelief was could he fully appreciate what Jesus did.

We cannot appreciate or understand our own sinfulness without understanding the distance between our own lives and that of God’s.

We are more important to God than we can possibly ever understand. We are so important that, though we won’t do unreasonable things, God will. God is love, and our sins remind us that we fall short of what God wants for us. It is a good thing that He wants us so badly that our sins can be forgiven.

PATRIARCH – AUGUSTINE I

The Most Rev. John P. Walzer, D.D. Archbishop