September 3, 2025

Fr. John Riccardo

I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus, urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment; I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary. Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me (Philemon 9-10, 12-17).

We have before us this Sunday an extraordinary example of Paul teaching a very young Christian not just what to think but how to think. The immediate context is nearly impossible to understand for Americans, who are so rightly traumatized by the horror of the slave trade that has so scarred our nation.

The man to whom Paul is writing, Philemon, is a slave owner. The man about whom Paul is writing, Onesimus, is a runaway slave from Philemon’s household. Slavery, plain and simple, was part of the social fabric of the Roman Empire. In fact, it’s been part of every culture since the fall. Roughly one-third of the urban population in the Roman Empire was slaves. Another one-third had been slaves but obtained their freedom in one way or another, as was somewhat common. What’s being revealed in this short and intimate letter is what led to the eradication of slavery: the power of the Gospel moving in the hearts, minds and laws of individual peoples and entire nations.

The Roman Empire was one of great social barriers that were immovable. Until the Gospel brought them crumbling down. People were divided by categories: citizens and non-citizens, slaves and free, Gentiles and Jews, and more. There was “us” and “them.” Into this world came the powerful proclamation that God, in the person of Jesus, had defeated the one common enemy of the entire human race — the devil, and with him the powers of Sin and Death — and was now summoning all men and women into His family. Better, He was calling them back into His family, for this was His vision for the human race from the start: to be His people and to be their God. Pledging one’s allegiance to this rescuing God, and responding to what He had done by entering the family through the sacrament of baptism, brought about a real change in how a person thought about, saw and spoke about the others who had similarly entered the family. No longer was there “us” and “them” but only “us.”

This is what Paul is teaching Philemon. It’s as if he said, “The institution of slavery might exist in this fallen world, but Jesus’ death and resurrection has rescued the world from its previously enslaving powers. Onesimus is your brother. And if he is in truth your brother, well, how can you continue to have him and use him as a slave? What’s more, God is calling all of us who have responded to the Gospel to live like leaven in the midst of this world, to be agents of reconciliation, for His call isn’t for some people but for all people.

This way of thinking, this way of seeing one another, this way of seeing who the real enemy was (and was not) smashed the various social barriers that had previously appeared immovable. It turned the world upside down.

As we eavesdrop on Paul teaching Philemon this week, he’s teaching us too. The world is still divided between “us” and “them” — just read the news. The call on the disciple of Jesus is still to announce the good news that the entire human race has been rescued from the powers of Sin and Death, and the subsequent enslaving forces of division, hatred and more. But not just to announce it. To put the power of the Gospel into effect in every dimension of human life, to act like leaven so as to make the world ever more authentically human.

This is obviously an enormous call! Where do we start? Perhaps we should start with something small this week. How do we see each other in our parishes and dioceses? How do we speak about one another? How do we relate to one another? Do we truly see each other as family? Do we really love each other? Or do we more or less look and sound like the world? We in ACTS XXIX continue to find great inspiration from one of the Church’s prayers at Mass regarding our mission in and as the Church. I invite us to pray with this and to ask the Lord how concretely we can put it into action this week.

“O God, in the covenant of Your Christ, You never cease to gather to Yourself from all nations a people growing together in unity through the Spirit; grant, we pray, that Your Church, faithful to the mission entrusted to her, may continually go forward with the human family and always be the leaven and the soul of human society, to renew it in Christ and transform it into the family of God.”

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