Longing like Christ

 Today’s reading (Romans 9: 1-5) gives expression to a sentiment that is increasingly rare: a deeply felt solicitude and concern for the salvation of souls (in this case, Paul’s fellow Jews). St Paul’s words are almost confessional in this passage from his great Letter to the Romans: “my sorrow is so great, my mental anguish so endless”. These are powerful feelings indeed. After all, this is the same St Paul who can do all things in Christ who strengthens him, so what is the source of his acute sorrow? How can this man who lives so deeply in Christ feel like this?

St Paul avoids saying it explicitly, but he announces it indirectly and paradoxically: “I would willingly be condemned and be cut off from Christ if it could help my brothers of Israel”.  The source of his anguish is the separation of the Jews from Christ. And yet, these words too are paradoxical, for how could St Paul feel like this unless he were deeply united to Christ and wished to remain so; unless Christ lived in him?

We hear echoes – or see a foreshadowing -  of these words in Jesus’ own sentiments as He sat with the disciples looking upon the temple. On that occasion, he blurted out these surprising words:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing (Matthew 23: 37).

The sorrow and mental anguish of St Paul is not his at all but Christ’s. The longing of St Paul is a sharing in the deeper, passionate longing of Jesus to recover His chosen people.

And yet, by corollary, we can say that this passion extends also to us and especially to those who are not part of the Mystical Body or whose union with it is imperfect. Only union with Jesus can bring us to the Father’s house. And while there are ways in which that union through grace can come about outside the visible confines of the communion of the Church, the only proper attitude to separation is this anguish of Jesus that is echoed by St Paul.

If everyone is going to heaven in the end, then such anguish would be pointless. That said, when did we last sound like St Paul – when did we last feel like St Paul – with regard to his Jewish brethren or those we are separated from?

Like St Paul, in the end we should long to be dissolved and to be with Christ. And we should long to see others longing for the same blessed end.