I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy

I Live, No Longer I

Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy

Laura Reece Hogan

Foreword by Donald Senior, CP

Preface by Ruth Burrows, OCD

I Live, No Longer I

Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy

Copyright © 2017 Laura Reece Hogan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Excerpt from Beauty, Too, Seeks Surrender from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers published by ICS Publications, Washington, D.C. All copyrights, Carmelite Monastery, Pewaukee, WI. Used with permission.

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible with revised New Testament and Psalms © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Paul in Prison

Chapter 1: De-Centering and Divine Presence

Chapter 2: Perspective Adjustment, or the Paradox of the Cross

Chapter 3: A Map Left Behind

Chapter 4: Mark of the Messiah

Chapter 5: Messiah, Expressed

Chapter 6: Targets to Arrows

Chapter 7: Fitted to the Bow

Conclusion: I Live, No Longer I

Bibliography

To all the little birds, now and to come.

May you keep your eyes on what is above,

sing your song to God and all his creation,

and be a mighty warrior of the heart.

I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.

Galatians 2:19–20

We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28

Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:13–14

Foreword

Donald Senior, CP

For many years I have had the privilege of serving as the New Testament book review editor for The Bible Today, a journal that appears six times a year and focuses exclusively on biblical topics. The review articles I compose consist of brief evaluations of some twenty new books for each issue. Every time the deadline approaches to write my round-up of reviews, I worry that there might not be enough good books for the review article. I have always worried in vain. The production of books on the Bible and specifically the New Testament never seems to falter.

A heavy portion of these new publications focuses on the Pauline writings. The list of new titles over the years charts the prevailing interests of modern biblical scholarship. As a result, the majority of publications deal with historical, literary, and doctrinal issues triggered by Paul’s letters. More traditional, historically inclined studies, for example, take up such issues as what we can know about Paul’s biography: When and where was he born? What is the chronological sequence of the various letters he wrote? Under what circumstances did he write his letters? Was he a Roman citizen, as the Acts of the Apostles claims? And, if so, how did he gain such citizenship? What influence did his apparent origin in Tarsus, a Greco-Roman university town at the time, have on Paul? What was the nature of his training as a Pharisee and interpreter of the Law? And how should we track Paul’s various missionary journeys? How many miles did Paul and his companions travel? And how did Paul meet his death? Was it during his house imprisonment in Rome as narrated in the conclusion to the Acts of the Apostles? Or was Paul eventually released from prison and was able to travel to Spain as he longed to do? A more recent focus on these and other basic historical questions is the issue of the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles, with most scholars preferring to give more weight to Paul’s own testimony in his letters when the chronology and events narrated about Paul in Acts seem to differ from the description in Paul’s own writings.

To these more traditional historical inquiries has been added in more recent years a focus on literary analysis of Paul’s letters. To what degree do the Pauline letters follow the canons of ancient letter writing and how do they differ? Did Paul write these letters or dictate them? What are the thought structures of individual letters? How much was Paul influenced by the norms of ancient rhetoric in his writings? Are some of Paul’s letters now present in the New Testament actually combinations of more than one letter, such as is often presumed with Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians? What elements of Paul’s letters are quotations from preexisting creedal formulas or early Christian hymns? And a perennially debated issue—are all of the letters attributed to Paul actually written by him or by later writers evoking his name? Here the focus is on the Pastoral Letters and Colossians and Ephesians.

Doctrinal or theological concerns also command a large portion of current publications on Paul. Topics such as what is the significance of Paul’s conversion experience—and is it, in fact, accurately described as a conversion or, as Paul seems to label it in Galatians 1:15, a call situated within the broader framework of his Jewish heritage? Of course, an abiding doctrinal question is the centrality of the notion of justification by faith alone as being the heart of Paul’s theological message—a perspective maintained strongly by traditional Protestant interpretation but now questioned by others who see it as one among many central themes in Paul’s repertoire. And this issue, in turn, raises the question of Paul’s view of the Jewish Law and its validity in the face of the Christ event. To what degree, in fact, is Paul’s theology influenced by Jewish tradition? Does he have anything in common with the sectarian Jewish community at Qumran that was behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, a Jewish stream of tradition virtually contemporary with Paul? And is there also influence coming from Greco-Roman religions and moral philosophy? Barrels of ink have been employed on particular theological or ethical issues in Paul: his Christology, his ethics, his use of tradition, his ecclesiology, his view of sexuality, his eschatology, etc. An important underlying question here, too, is to what degree did Paul create Christian doctrine as distinct from being the recipient and interpreter of it? Should Paul be considered as, in fact, the true founder of Christianity? To what degree was Paul and his theology shaped by the teachings and example of Christ?

More recent scholarship has been engaged in the question of a new perspective on Paul. Triggered by the writings of such great scholars as Krister Stendahl and Ed Sanders, a prevailing question has to do with Paul’s relationship to Judaism. A more traditional view that saw a sharp cleavage between the Christian Paul and his life in Judaism has been called into question. Did Paul, in fact, reject his Jewish heritage in the wake of his encounter with Christ? Or, as Krister Stendahl had observed, was Paul’s inaugural experience to be understood as a call or new vocation within the stream of his Jewish experience triggered by his faith in Christ as the promised Messiah of Israel. In this view Paul’s mission to the Gentiles was not a rejection of his Jewish heritage but an expansion in his realization of God’s plan for the salvation of the world. Sanders and others have also called for a rehabilitation of Christian understanding of ancient—and modern—Judaism—a call fueled in part by the tragedy of the Holocaust. Judaism is not to be thought of as a legalistic religion with its burdens of guilt and minute casuistry as it is often caricatured, but rather, in Sander’s phrase, as a religion of covenantal nomism—that is, observance of the Jewish law was a faithful response to God’s gift or grace of the Covenant. In Sander’s view, Paul did not differ from Judaism because it was legalistic, as some have presumed, but because of Paul’s view that Christ was the promised Messiah and Son of God—a view not shared by his contemporary Jewish peers.

This is a far from complete scan of recent scholarship but it does illustrate the kind of questions that most scholars have posed when turning to the Pauline letters. Against that backdrop, the graceful and inspiring work of Laura Reece Hogan takes a different path. Most of the prevailing scholarship on Paul is focused on understanding what Paul meant in his writings and how his original audiences might have understood them. The focus of this work, by contrast, is on what Paul’s theology means now. While drawing on much of this accumulated Pauline scholarship, Laura’s interest is in the meaning of Paul’s theology for contemporary Christian spirituality and life. The spirit of this book reflects the call of Pope Benedict XVI in his exhortation, Verbum Domini, on the role of Scripture within the life and ministry of the Church. While endorsing the focus of modern biblical scholarship on historical criticism and allied methods, he also encouraged Catholic biblical scholars to explore the meaning of the Scriptures for the life of faith. Certainly most interpreters of Paul—past and present—recognize that the death and resurrection of Jesus stands at the heart of Paul’s vision of Christian life and is at the core of his theology. Yet a smaller circle of Pauline interpreters deals in depth with the issue of the significance of Paul’s theology of the cross on the essential dynamics of modern Christian life. Here is where Laura concentrates her attention.

A key existential question is the path into her reflections on Paul: how do the inevitable suffering, loss, and death we experience interconnect with life and the divine? (p. 2). Drawing in particular on Paul’s fundamental and profound articulation of his Christology in the famous hymn quoted in his letter to the Philippians 2:5–11, Laura summarizes Paul’s spirituality in the form of three fundamental dynamics found in the life of Jesus himself, in Paul as an ardent follower of Jesus, and as the pattern for the life of the Christian disciple and the community formed in Christ’s name. Those three moments are: 1) Kenosis, or self-emptying exemplified in Christ’s self-transcending love that leads to the cross and shapes its fundamental meaning; 2) Enosis, or being with us—the realization of God’s abiding and sustaining presence even in the midst of suffering that Jesus himself experienced in his anguish on the cross; and 3) Theosis, or communion with the divine that was the essence of Jesus’ existence and becomes the goal and fundamental hope of all human existence. Equally important, these dimensions of the Christ life lead to authentic joy and this is one of the major focuses of Laura’s work. Finding profound and abiding joy in the midst of, and even through, suffering in the spirit of Christ is paradoxically the characteristic virtue of authentic Christian life.

Drawing on proven scholarship, Laura elaborates these fundamental dynamics or dimensions of the Christian life as found in Paul and offered to the Christian. She is not content simply with articulating this rich theology—a worthy task in itself—but also to tie it into Christian experience. She has been strongly influenced by Carmelite spirituality in her own life and several exemplars of that great tradition demonstrate her thesis, none more eloquently than Thérèse of Lisieux, the little bird who learned to soar like an eagle as she lived the very theology Laura describes. And with an example that might surprise and inspire many contemporary Christians, she probes the experience of Steven Colbert, famed comedian and now host of The Late Show. A devout Catholic, Colbert speaks movingly of eventually discovering in the tragic loss of his father and two brothers in a plane crash, not only acceptance of this intense suffering but, paradoxically, finding in this wrenching experience the reality of God’s sustaining grace and the joy that flows from seeing all life as a gift. Amazing as it may be, Paul’s passionate claim that Christ lives in me is echoed in the lives of Christians two thousand years later who find life in the midst of great suffering—the very heart of the Paschal mystery.

The first major statement of Pope Francis was his exhortation following the 2010 synod on Evangelization entitled The Joy of the Gospel. Here, too, is found, as in Paul’s life and teaching, this sure conviction that the heart of Christian spirituality is found in a personal and abiding relationship with Jesus—a portrayal of the Christian life expressed not only in the Pope’s words but in his radiant joy, his love for the poor, his commitment to justice, and his prophetic courage.

Readers of Laura Reece Hogan’s work whose title reveals its fundamental thesis—I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy—will find the same depth of understanding, the same eloquent and inspiring language, and the same profound grasp of the biblical message. Those who want to find the heart of Paul’s dynamic spirituality and meaning for our own lives of suffering and joy can turn to the pages of this beautiful book.

Preface

Ruth Burrows, OCD

This is a work of light and love and of deep conviction. For all its simple, homely tone it is scholarly. The author has laboured long to acquire her easy familiarity with the Letters of Paul. Insight such as hers can come only from very prayerful exposure to the sacred word and, most importantly, the struggle to live its truth. The Holy Spirit prompts, guides and crowns with wisdom so earnest an endeavour to grow in the knowledge of Christ.

What gripped and absorbed our author’s attention was St. Paul’s discovery that the cross of Christ, to him an insufferable anathema, was in fact, God’s all-sufficient, effective answer to humankind’s immeasurable woe: if ‘even death on a cross’ had the supreme ability to restore and transform humanity, then that changed everything (p. 2). We must glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection: through whom we have been saved and set free (an expansion of Gal 6:14 used as the Entrance chant to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper). It seems to me that this triumphant song expresses Paul’s teaching in a nutshell and I Live, No Longer I, echoes his voice in a splendid commentary bringing Paul’s theology into the hearth and home of little ones, of us, ordinary folk. But of course, St. Paul himself was addressing ordinary folk of the time.

It is of passionate concern for Laura that many good, faithful Christians miss so much grace. They suffer their quota of human ills and yet—so it seems—fail to see them in the light of the saving Cross of Christ, so they hinder if not thwart God’s desire to purify and transform them through their very pain. Generally speaking, we do not reflect sufficiently on the reality of our divine destiny. We are called to a destiny that far exceeds our insatiable thirst for perfect happiness and yet, though created for this bliss, we cannot, of ourselves attain it. Only God can bring us to it by the immeasurable greatness of his power at work in us (cf. Eph 1:19), the same mighty power by which he raised Christ from the dead and crowned him with glory and honour. We fail to appreciate the fact that the resurrection of the crucified Son of God who emptied himself (Phil 2:7) effected a cosmic shift in human existence; an absolutely new creation came to be. As Christians we are of that new creation, already in essence children of God, already sharing the divine nature. But do we really, consistently, live as such? Our author is passionately concerned to inform and to convince us of this new existence that faith in the Cross of Christ is offering us, opening up new horizons of hope and joyful possibility. What makes a truly Christian view of life completely different from, and even opposed to the natural world view, is the redemptive, transforming power of the Cross.

The very epitome of human woe hung on the cross on Good Friday, consumed with pain: physical torture, spiritual agony; humiliated, derided, seemingly defeated—the crucified Son of God! God raised him high, we sing, and gave him a name above every name and he became in deed our life our salvation and our resurrection. Everything depends on our truly believing this, and choosing to live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered himself for me (Gal 2:20). Blessed we are to be given this insight and shown its implications for our daily living!

St. Paul urged his converts to see the world and the whole of human existence through the lens of faith; to judge everything, every event from the viewpoint of Christ, and Laura Hogan speaks with his voice today. She gives us poignant examples of fellow-travellers bravely struggling to maintain this faith-view in great pain of one kind or another. We readily appreciate the divinely-infused heroism displayed in these instances of grievous sufferings. Yet let us not overlook the almost constant demands on our faith-vision by our pathetic, intimately personal little miseries: the wear and tear of our daily life, with its fatigues, its tedium; our temperamental moods and wounded sensitivities, our heartaches and disappointments; and the incommunicable pain of just being the person I am. We are ashamed to dignify all this as suffering and we assume implicitly that it has nothing to do with the Cross of Christ. In fact it has everything to do with the Cross and the more so perhaps because inglorious. Resolutely to believe that all the ills and afflictions of our human state are the chalice which my Father has given me and then, in union with Jesus, drinking it to the dregs is precisely sharing the death of Jesus so as to share his resurrection. It is a continual, habitual no to our natural egotism and a yes to Jesus. The Father is free to purify and transform us until I live, no longer I, Christ lives in me. These afflictions will be with us anyway, exploited or not, how tragic to waste them.

I Live, No Longer I could change our lives but only if we accept the challenge and choose the mind of Christ over our own natural egotistical mind. Even the bitterest grief would be shot through with joy, My joy—Jesus’ joy, deriving from certainty in the unshakeable, all-embracing, utterly tender and compassionate love of our Father.

Ruth Burrows

Carmel Quidenham

Acknowledgments

This book is a honeycomb created through long and intricate beework. It began with carefully researched and developed academic ideas, which pollinated principles in my daily living, and grew into a difficult writing process of capturing involved theological concepts in metaphor, example, and images of ordinary life. So it is not surprising that I have many people to acknowledge!

First and foremost, I thank Dr. Michael Downey, who has been a wonderful support and champion of this work, from beginning to finish. I am also grateful to Matthew Wimer, Brian Palmer, and Jana Wipf of Wipf & Stock for their kind assistance.

In addition to Dr. Downey, I thank Fr. J. Patrick Mullen, Fr. John P. Brennan, SMA, and Fr. Luke Dysinger, OSB, for their guidance and support of my Master’s thesis, which provided the seeds for this book.

I am deeply grateful to those who have read, encouraged, and otherwise supported this book over the last several years: Fr. Donald Senior, CP, Sr. Ruth Burrows, OCD, Kate Smirnoff, Dr. Patrick Nichelson, Ann Evans, Debbie Gordon, Sr. Mary Leanne Hubbard, SND, Sr. Mary Glennon, CHF, Sr. Mary Grace Melcher, OCD, Jan McGuire, Olga Hayek, Dr. Susan Rose, Martha Mareno,