The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
“I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13) is a popular verse among athletes largely because of its confident, optimistic, and can-do tone. In this common translation, Paul seems to suggest that he can achieve anything he puts his mind to as long as he does it in Christ who strengthens him.
Yet when we read Philippians 4:13 with this triumphal tone, we miss the heart of this beautiful chapter in which Paul exhorts the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord always, to have no anxiety, and to keep doing what they have learned and received from him. In a word, Paul wants the Philippians to persevere in hope!
Today’s readings invite us to the same perseverance. They point us toward the promise of what is to come (the banquet feast of heaven where every tear will be wiped away and death itself is destroyed), and they teach us, through St. Paul’s example, the proper perspective for persevering in the meantime — a time certain to include its fair share of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, blessings and burdens.
One of the most inspiring spiritual works I have ever read is The Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the final chapter of which is about the Cross itself. It speaks to each of us as we persevere in hope while longing for the full fruits of the resurrection:
“Whether it be unfair treatment, fatigue or frustration at work, a lapse of health, tasks beyond talents, seasons of loneliness, bleakness in prayer, the aloofness of friends; or whether it be the sadness of our having inflicted any of this on others … there will be dying to do on our way to the Father.
But we do not grieve as men without hope, for Christ the Lord has risen to die no more. He has taken us into the mystery and the grace of this life that springs up from death… There is no failure the Lord’s love cannot reverse, no humiliation He cannot exchange for blessing, no anger He cannot dissolve, no routine He cannot transfigure. All is swallowed up in victory. He has nothing but gifts to offer. It remains only for us to find how even the cross can be borne as a gift.”
Crosses big and small will meet us in every season of life; this is assured. In the face of these trials, we might be tempted to a confident, optimistic, and can-do self-reliance, but our invitation is to lean on the Lord always, no matter what. Reliance on God is Paul’s “secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need,” and it is our key to persevering in hope.
Stephen Barany is an illustrator currently pursuing his MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture at Washington University in St. Louis. He’s from South Bend, IN, where he studied philosophy, design, and theology at the University of Notre Dame. You can find out more about him on Instagram and his website.