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Reflections on the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By John Houk

The readings for
this Sunday.

target=_blank>The 2nd letter of Paul to Timothy

Our Roman Catholic Church has a long history of restricting access to the Bible. In 447 Pope Leo I directed that all apocryphal books be burned. In 1229 the Council of Taulouse prohibited lay people from even having a Bible. In 1713 Pope Clement XI condemned the idea that reading scripture was for all people, and in 1816 Pope Pius VII opposed the translation of scripture into the vernacular. Then in 1965 the Second Vatican Council proclaimed that "Easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided to all Christian faithful"!

Without making any judgment regarding our Church’s past practice of discouraging and even forbidding scripture reading by lay people we can see that Vatican II changed the official Catholic approach 180 degrees. The question that remains is have we Catholics changed ourselves? To help answer this question we can turn to the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy, which is read at mass on four consecutive Sundays beginning Oct 3. First let us consider how this letter is presented to us, and second we will consider the content of the passages.

2 Timothy begins "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." This is clearly a very personal letter from Paul to Timothy. Please put yourself in the place of Timothy receiving this loving letter. How would you read it? You would without doubt read from beginning to end, and more than once.

Today’s Lectionary provides that small pieces of this letter be read to us on several Sundays. Would you read your own personal letter in disconnected pieces? Most certainly not, except for one possibility. Suppose you have had this letter for many years and have read it many times. There may then be a special day when you would take the letter out and read a passage especially important to you. Reading this small passage would bring into your presence the person who wrote it and why they wrote it as well as the message of that particular passage.

When our official Church made the mind changing decision to encourage scripture reading we went to a three-year cycle of readings instead of the old one-year cycle. This was only one part of the new teaching that was intended to connect us to our roots in the Bible. These little incomplete passages will only come alive for us when we do our own part and read this whole letter just like Timothy did..

Looking at the content of what gets read to us will help complete the answer to our question. When the new three-year cycle of reading was created there was a process of picking and choosing what gets read and perhaps as important what does not get read. For example, the Lectionary calls for reading, "Wives be subject to your husbands for the husband is head of the wife just as Christ is head of the Church" , but leaves unread just a few verses later in Ephesians the passage, "Slaves obey your master with fear and trembling". These may be good choices or not so good, but there is a definite point of view expressed in their selection.

Here are a couple of passages you will hear read from Paul’s personal letter to Timothy and a couple you will not hear. You will hear, "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love" and, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching". You will not hear, "Avoid those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at the knowledge of truth" and, "I am grateful to God whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did" (Paul was a Jew).

What do you think were the reasons that these passages were chosen or not chosen, and in answering that question, what can we learn about Paul and about our Church? Each week you are presented with verses read and not read. The question we posed then becomes personal. Have you changed in response to the teaching of Vatican II? This teaching encourages scripture reading and by so doing encourages a new maturity in lay Catholics? Finally, you will not experience the Sunday readings as intended by our Church until you become familiar with what is being read and, maybe just as important, not read.