14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

In today’s second reading, St. Paul addresses one of the seemingly greatest contradictions of being a Christian: finding strength in our own weakness, finding contentment with hardship, insults, persecutions and constraints. A concept many find difficult to understand and a fault, according to many, that Christianity propagates and encourages.

Yet, if we look really close at this idea, it is, at heart, a message of humility and a reminder of why we do what we do and why we believe as we believe. St. Paul, in fact, begins by speaking about a thorn in his flesh, which he prays to be taken away, but still persists.

Yet, it is a reminder, it seems, for him to not forget that, as great as he may have become, he is still merely the messenger and not the king, the prophet and not God Himself, a man who only a little while before, persecuted the Church and now only has God to thank for his conversion.

Our weakness, like St. Paul, constantly reminds us of our dependence upon God and the more we depend upon Him, the more we realize how important it is for us to never leave His side. For, while the world has convinced us that true weakness means we are incapable of doing something ourselves, with God, it is quite the opposite, because no matter how strong or how powerful we are or may think we are, we are still weak in our sin. In fact, nothing in this world can conquer us or destroy us as much our sin.   

That is why when we stay close to God, we stay close to Him who knows us better than ourselves and who knows what we need and what will help us to grow in holiness and draw closer to Him. Because, ultimately, it is God’s grace, as it was for St. Paul, that is sufficient for us, it is the very gift of His life, the very gift of His love that can sustain us when nothing else can, that can support us when we feel as though we cannot go on.

That is what is meant by the simple phrase: “power is made perfect in weakness,” because we can only reach perfection when we don’t do it ourselves, we can only boast in our weakness when Christ’s power is made manifest through it.

In fact, we need only look at the saints to see this to be true. St. Pio suffered immensely, with the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ upon his body, and yet he was one of the most spiritually powerful people in the world. In fact, when someone asked him how painful it was as he stood at the altar for Mass, he reminded the person that he was not standing but hanging, that his weakness was made strong by the Cross.

Bl. Mother Teresa suffered from what many saints call the Dark Night of the Soul, never even knowing if God existed, and yet in her pain, in her anguish, in her suffering, she still sought to find God in those she took care of. She still found strength in spite of the weakness of her faith.

St. John Vianney, the patron of priests, failed all of his studies, and almost never became a priest. Yet, through the grace of God, he not only managed to pass his tests but to become a powerful preacher, pastor and confessor.

To truly win we have to lose, to succeed, we have to fail, to be first we have to be last, and to truly live our lives here we have to die to ourselves. This is what it means to be a Christian, this is the struggle we face each and everyday, for, if we are genuinely living our lives as a Christian, our life is nothing more than a series of seeming contradictions, that no one, including ourselves, sometimes, will ever understand.

It is a hard message that sometimes seems to make no sense unless we look at it with the eyes of faith, because weakness, in this sense allows us to see the true power of God in our lives.

When we are ready to admit that weakness, then our strength is no longer our own, but God’s and we have the promise that through Him we can do all things, knowing the same thing St. Paul came to understand, that, indeed, to be weak is, in actuality, to be strong.