Thursday of the
Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
(Galatians 3:1-5; Luke 11:5-13)
Paul’s frontal attack against the Galatians – “O stupid
Galatians, who has bewitched you?” – makes us wonder what kind of people would
tolerate such criticism. Most likely
Paul is addressing a community of Christians he founded in the northern part of
the province of Galatia.
The fair-haired and light complexioned inhabitants of that area migrated
in the third century before Christ from the region of the Pyrenees Mountains separating
what is presently France and Spain. “Galatians”
comes from the same root as the Latin word Gallia
which refers to the expansive tract of Western Europe that includes modern France.
In Paul’s day Galatians were considered something like the
giant but amicable Brobdingnagians of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. One biblical
commentator describes the Galatian as “large, unpredictable simpletons,
instinctively generous, ferocious and highly dangerous when angry, but without
stamina and easy to trick.” Paul
evidently considers them good-hearted enough to accept his sharp disapproval
without rejecting the gospel he preached.
He likely developed a deep rapport when ill health caused him to stay
with them for an extended time.
Paul’s language, however, reveals more about himself than
about the Galatians. For Paul the
single, most important fact of life is God’s redemption of humanity in Jesus
Christ. To his mind Christ commissioned
him to preach this truth to non-Jews. He
does not mean to subjugate anyone with his harsh speech but only to urge them
to accept the salvation won by Christ.
If strong language is necessary, he would muster the highest indignation. If refined rhetoric would do the job, he
would polish his argument. As he himself
would write to the Corinthians, “I have become all things to all, so that I
might save at least some” (I Cor 9:22).
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