“I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me….” This remarkable declaration of St. Paul invites us to consider whether we can have the same confidence as to what awaits us in death.
            St. Paul’s declaration could be seen as unseemly boasting, but he is simply offering a truthful assessment of his own life. St. Paul was a remarkable disciple of Jesus Christ. Despite the incredible challenges and difficulties that he faced, Paul successfully brought the Gospel of Christ to all of Asia Minor, Greece and finally to Europe through his final apostolic work in Rome. It is hard for us to imagine how hard it would have been to do what St. Paul did. Initially, he faced skepticism within the Church because of his history as a persecutor of the Christians. He faced intense opposition when he insisted that non-Jews had to be welcomed into the Church of Christ without first becoming Jews. St. Paul faced the anger and hostility of Jews who opposed the Christian Gospel, and the violence of civil authorities who saw him as a threat to social order. Finally, Paul faced the basic challenge of travel in his era which was always difficult and frequently very dangerous. Paul, however, stayed the course of his faith – he persevered in faith through all the challenges and difficulties that he faced.
            We should not measure our lives of faith against the life of St. Paul. Few of us are called to do what he did and did so well. We are all, however, called to be the presence of Christ in our world – the presence of Christ’s compassion, mercy, generosity, concern for the poor and the powerless, the presence of Christ’s welcome to the stranger. If every day we concentrate our efforts on being more faithful to these values, then when our life nears its end we, too, can join with St. Paul in saying that we have kept the faith and so anticipate a crown of righteousness.
            May all of us renew our commitment to our Christian vocation daily so that we can live in the confidence that one day the crown of righteousness will await us as it did St. Paul!
 
 
 
                                                                                                                   Fr. Mark Hallinan, S.J.