31st October 2014

As I think more about the then and now of evangelisation, the less can I feel content with the way things are today. Is there any leader of our church who could write to us in the UK thanking God for us as St Paul and Timothy could do to the church of the Philppians? Are we in any way examples of the perseverance in the faith as are the Philippians in Paul's eyes. Our Pope frequently applauds and encourages joy in the variety and numbers of believers that exist throughout the world; but has anyone looked at us the Catholic Church in England and been able to praise and thank God for us.

Paul was probably in Rome when writing this, maybe actually in chains in prison. The evangelist Luke is said to be the founder of the Philippian church. Paul had previously worked there. Their closeness in time  to the Good News is undisputable. The "recent events in Jerusalem"had happened only 30 or so years before this letter of Paul. These people so well praised by Paul were close the time of the Lord and were, probably expecting the "end  of time" sooner than later. And yet here we can see an attempt to begin an intellectual understanding of Christ. Jesus is not just the man known to the apostles and disciple in Palestine but is treated as an understandable part of God's plan for mankind. To be truly human we need to see Christ as Paul portrayed him and to truly put our worship before all earthly things.

Sometimes I think it is easier for the first evangelists for they had the closeness to the living Christ both before and after the resurrection whereas we have to fill the 2 millennia between then and now with thought and teachings that can lead us away from the Gospel into a wonderland of thought and knowledge, which because it is knowable,  becomes more important than the essential teachings of Christ. And then when I read:

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Words included in a  letter written about 1985 to translate the time-gap between it and Our Lord's time, into 2014 terms and I see that even then teachers of the church were ready to explore the depths and expound the heights of Christ's words in a way that has continued ever since. Oh that today to increase knowledge of Christ was foremost in the minds and actions of our prelates and not confused by a pandering to the needs of our  modern generation which is concerned with image and style but oblivious to that which was obvious to the Apostles and the disciples.

Taken in Philippi