30 October 2014
Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
In the First Reading today Paul uses some graphic images describing how a Christian should arm himself in meeting the Adversary. He should rig up head to toe in the accoutrements of war. (Ironically Paul was a chained prisoner when he wrote this!). It is easy to imagine him bellowing out at his cell wall the final exhortation in the last section of this reading. Paul was never one to shy away from using “offensive language”.
His toughness is the pattern for how to witness to the Gospel in our limpid, politically correct society. Pray that we too can strip ourselves of soft ways and human respect, convinced that ultimately it is not fellow human beings we are facing, but the devil, our real enemy. And we need the right kind of armor to confront him.
Doesn’t Jesus give witness to the same message in today’s Gospel: “Go tell that fox…”? It was a response that the fathers at the Synod on the Family might have used with profit to reply to anyone the devil uses to contest God’s design of marriage. Let us pray today that the Holy Spirit will arm all Christians who defend the family and marriage with the gear Paul recommends for war.