Our Venerable Father Euthymius the Younger; The Holy Venerable-Martyr Lucian, Priest of Great Antioch.
Colossians 1:24-29; Luke 9:7-11.
Read Colossians 1:24-29
St. John Chrysostom writes:
How does he say you are made a saint? Tell me. How are you called faithful? Is it not because you were sanctified through death? Is it not because you have faith in Christ? …This love (of Epaphras’) is wonderful and steadfast; all other love has only the name. And there are some persons who are not of this kind, but such is not friendship; for this reason, it is easily dissolved. There are many causes producing friendship …the social sort …or commonality of trade …the natural …that of wife to husband …But spiritual love is higher than all. As if she were some queen ruling her subjects …she descends from above, out of heaven. And why do you wonder that she needs no benefits to subsist, seeing that she is not even overthrown by injuries? …In the world indeed, when a father has been insulted, he withdraws his love. Not so there however: he even went to those who stoned him, seeking to do them good. For nothing, nothing is so strong as the bond of the Spirit. Someone who became a friend from receiving benefits, will, should these be discontinued, become an enemy. One who by habitual intercourse was made inseparable, will, when the habit is broken through, let his friendship become extinct. A wife, after a broil, will leave her husband, and withdraw affection …
But in the case of spiritual love there is nothing of this. For by none of these things, can it be dissolved, seeing it not composed of them. Neither time, no length of journey, nor ill usage, nor being evil spoken of, nor anger, nor insult, nor any other thing, make inroads on it, nor have the power of dissolving it …Let us then follow after the friendships of the Spirit. (The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox, page 447,448)
It is because of Spiritual love St. Paul, and anyone who possesses it, can sincerely say, as St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle reading, “I am now rejoicing in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh, I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”
St John Chrysostom also wrote this with respect to St Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians:
Holy, indeed, are all the Epistles of Paul: but those which he sent after he was in bonds have some advantage: those, for instance, to the Ephesians and Philemon, to Timothy, to the Philippians, and the one before us. For this epistle was also sent when he was a prisoner, since he writes in it thus: ‘for which I am also in bonds, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak’ (Col. 4:3,4). But this epistle appears to have been written after that to the Romans …near the close of his preaching …As if a champion were to write in the midst of carnage and victory, so also in truth did he… (The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox, page 447,448)
St John Chrysostom words show the magnanimity of St Paul’s character and his Spiritual love. As Jesus called his disciples to follow him, described as the ‘carrying of the cross’ so to Paul tells these early Christians to imitate him. (1 Corinthians 4:16; 11:1) So too, we are all called to do likewise. Amen.