Eleventh Sunday after Trinity AD 2025

Saint Paul was not inclusive in modern terms. On the contrary, he was extremely exclusive. Thus, he says at the beginning of the Epistle to the Galatians: “As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” Similarly, in today’s Epistle to the Corinthians, he says: “I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.”

Paul’s exclusivity was not born of narrow-mindedness, but rather of genuine concern. What he writes here is not hate speech, it is a speech of love. Paul, like God, wants no one to perish, but that all may come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved. Saint Paul knew that it was only by the grace of God that he was what he was – yes, the last and least of the apostles, as he himself admitted, but still one of those who had been saved from sin through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and given the opportunity for a new beginning, a new life.

Although Paul can claim to have worked harder and laboured more than the other apostles, he knows for sure that he cannot rely on his own merits, but only on God’s forgiving love. Our faith and our hope are not based on ourselves, but on the death and resurrection of Christ, in which God has made us partakers. In Him is our life and eternal happiness.