Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2026

When the Lord appeared to Paul and called him to be His apostle, He sent a disciple named Ananias to baptize him. In speaking to Ananias, the Lord said something remarkable about Paul’s calling and the path that lay before him: “He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.” These words were certainly fulfilled: Paul was called not only to proclaim Christ, but also to suffer greatly for His sake.

Thus, when Paul wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians, he was a prisoner—or, as he himself put it, “the prisoner of Jesus Christ” for the sake of the Gentiles. And because he understood himself to be a prisoner of Jesus Christ, he did not regard his sufferings as a tragedy or misfortune, but as an essential part of his apostolic calling.

For this reason he encouraged the Ephesians: “I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.” In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul expresses the same conviction even more fully: “For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”

Paul knew that his calling was to proclaim the Gospel of the crucified and risen Christ not only with his words, but with his whole life—including his sufferings and, ultimately, his death. He understood that the most authentic proclamation of the Gospel was for his own life to take the form of the Cross. For when the power of Christ’s Cross is made manifest in him, the power of Christ’s Resurrection is made manifest in him as well.

This is the mystery at the heart of the Christian life: we are not called merely to speak about Christ, but to be conformed to Him. The Cross is not an interruption of the Christian vocation, nor evidence that God has abandoned us. Rather, when suffering is borne in faith and united with Christ, it may become the very place where His life and power are most clearly revealed.