Saint Paul’s Passion

“I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10)

The consuming passion of St. Paul was to know Christ. Is that not the supreme goal we Christians all should set and share? Who has not been approached by an eager young person, usually a man filled with his own idea of spirituality and demands to learn: “Do you know Jesus?” The implication regardless of how you reply is: No, you do not, but yes, I do. Let me tell you all about Him. But the phrase in Philippians does not lend itself to a naïve self-styled evangelist. It comes instead from the mind of the great mystical theologian, St. Paul. We wonder what he meant. The word know is the same term for the love act first used regarding Adam and Eve. It describes the most profound knowledge of one person about another. St. Paul will never complete his quest, because it’s simply impossible to know Jesus Christ—not even beyond this lifetime in the Kingdom of Heaven. But it doesn’t suggest that he or we should give up the attempt.

Who of us can say we truly know one another—not a man for a woman or the other way, even after three score years or more of married life. Yet the holy apostle sets himself up for the inconceivable task of knowing Jesus, who is both God and a human being. The two beings, [hypostases] in one divine Person will never be fully understood. Theoretically, the human nature of the God-Man might be known, but that would require a separation of the two natures, and that is more than impossible; it’s heresy. And what can we know about the divine nature of Christ? Remember St. Peter, the other apostle to Gentiles who finally comprehended the incomprehensible, when on that night when our Lord was being led away to trial and Peter was accused for the third time of being one of Christ’s disciples, and he said quite truthfully, “I do not know Him.” [Meaning: I thought after all that time with Him I did, but I realize that I never really understood Him; I don’t know who He is.]

St. Paul aims at understanding the power of Christ’s resurrection: The power that comes from the Holy Spirit and brought the Lord from death and burial to life beyond the tomb. The power of the resurrection—who indeed is able to explain it? Not Peter or John, certainly not Mary Magdalene, were capable of understanding what they had seen [in Mary Magdalene’s case] or not seen [the empty tomb and wrappings]. The evidence of Christ’s resurrection overwhelmed them all. “Power” [energia] is exclusively divine, in the arena of the Holy Trinity, far beyond and above our limited human capacity to comprehend. For our reasoning, it doesn’t logically make sense. Jesus was a man who died and was buried. End of story. The dead stay dead. How long must a rational person repeat that morbid fact? But divine energy overcomes death. Put scripturally: Love is as strong as death. (Song of Songs)

The other goal of the apostles was to join in the “Fellowship of His suffering.” All normal human beings avoid suffering in all forms. Those who enjoy suffering or claim to do so are labeled masochists. But this person is not just anybody in agony. This is the Son of God. Fellowship means communion. St. Paul is obviously not a masochist, yet he feels that to bond with Jesus means that he must bear His cross. It’s why Christians wear crosses, make cross signs on their bodies, and even kiss the holy cross. By so doing they are uniting with the desire of St. Paul, and they start by confirming the spiritual energy that raised Christ to life from the tomb. And to rejoice with every opportunity to do what our Lord did—to live as though already dead, so that a new life will nourish our souls through this world and beyond.