A Homily for Sexagesima Sunday

+ Sexagesima Sunday could perhaps be renamed “St Paul’s Sunday,” for his boast in this morning’s Epistle seems never to end, and even in the collect of this Mass we ask Almighty God to be strengthened by the protection of this Doctor of the Gentiles! St Paul almost eclipses the great Parable of the Sower, which is so poignant at so many levels.

Nevertheless, let us stay with St Paul for a while. There is no question that he is a Prince of the Apostles and a great Doctor of the Faith. His boast, in context, is not unmerited. Nor is the veneration given him by the Church since her very foundation. Rightly does Rome boast a splendid Basilica to house his mortal remains and to welcome the constant stream of pilgrims who come to seek his intercession.

Yet, this singularly privileged Apostle was still a man, not an angel. As we know from his past, St Paul was not immaculately conceived. His greatness lay in the grace of persevering in the vocation given him at the moment of his conversion—and of that he rightly boasts. Even so, as we hear at the end of this morning’s Epistle, St Paul still struggled: “To keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated,” St Paul tells us. Furthermore—as would any of us—he asked to be freed of this torment: “Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me.”

St Paul’s prayer in this instance was in vain, at least in the sense of receiving exactly what he asked for—an experience that perhaps we know only too well! But, as does happen when we pray insistently and sincerely from the depth of our hearts, God’s response transforms the situation to hand and lifts it up to another level, as it were. We who are bound by our natural concerns can be given a glimpse, if not a foretaste, of supernatural realities. And that is precisely what happens here, when, having refused St Paul’s insistence on mundane demands, the Lord responds to St Paul with those potent words: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

My brothers and sisters, there is very much indeed here to contemplate! We rightly seek to conquer our vices and to grow in virtue, but so often become frustrated by our weakness that seems to result at times in our taking two steps backward for every one step forward we are somehow able to make. We become frustrated. Our insistent prayers for relief are not seemingly heard. The thorns in our flesh that succeed only to well in keeping us from being too proud hurt and do their damage and seem to cause even more to others. If we are not careful the temptation to moral despair can become a reality.

It is precisely here that the Lord’s words are spoken to us also, this morning, by the Church in her Sacred Liturgy: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It is exactly in the seemingly desperate circumstances we can so often find ourselves that the Church prays with us and for us, asking that we be strengthened by the protection of he who himself had to learn that weakness is part of our fallen human condition which only reliance on and cooperation with God’s grace can ultimately remedy if we persevere in our Christian vocation.

But what does it mean to rely on God’s grace and to cooperate with it? Most certainly it does not mean to wallow in our weaknesses and to indulge them. No: we must continue the battle against vice and seek to grow in virtue, as ever. Reliance on God’s grace is no excuse for spiritual sloth! Reliance on God’s grace does mean, however, that having done all that I possibly can and finding that that is still insufficient, I must in the end hand the matter over to God and be open to His solutions. St Paul persevered faithfully unto the end despite the thorns in the flesh from which he suffered. God’s grace was sufficient. An otherwise limited man became the great Doctor of the Gentiles who shed his blood for Christ rather than renounce the saving Truth He is.

So too must we, being prepared when perseverance seems impossible or our hopes and plans and even at times our particular vocation seem to lie in ruins, to pray: “Lord, I can’t do this by myself. I am inadequate. I need your grace. If you want this, you are going to have to help…now!” Such a heartfelt prayer will not go unanswered, but we must be careful—Our Lord has a habit of answering such prayers in ways that we may never have imagined (just ask St Paul) and of making of us something—someone—we could never have imagined being: that “new man…created according to God, in justice and holiness of life,” as the rite of the clothing of a new novice so poignantly insists as the monastic scapular is first placed on our shoulders.

“I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses,” St Paul insists “that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” We may not quite have St Paul’s appetite for ‘boasting’, but let us follow his example and not hesitate to recognise our weaknesses and to hand them over to Our Lord, for only then can we experience the plenitude of his grace and experience His power at work in perfecting us, weak as we are. To that end, may the Doctor of the Gentiles, St Paul, pray for us! +