I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH

XXX SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: 2 Tim 4:6-8,16-18

The readings for the Sunday liturgy always present us with a series of challenges, calling on us to examine ourselves, to change and to go forward in new directions more in accordance with God's calling and God’s will. 

In this Sunday’s readings, we listen to the second letter  of Paul to Timothy, where he looks back and makes an evaluation of his own life. Being in prison because of the Gospel, he saw his life as a sacrifice, poured down like a libation and offered to the Lord in total surrender. He knows that his time to depart has come. The future of his life is in the hands of the  Lord.

Paul's life was not an easy life; in fact, it was a continuous struggle that he was forced to fight in order to carry on with his evangelical work. Paul wrote:  "I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish" (2 Tm 4:7).

If we read the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's own letters, mainly to the Galatians and to the Corinthians, we get a good picture of that struggle that put his life many times in danger.

Like Paul's life, our lives lived in faith are a continuous struggle, implying the daily effort to be faithful. It is a struggle within and without; with the enemy inside our own hearts and the enemies outside, who try to separate us from the love of Christ.

In the end, when our time comes, may we be able to say like Paul: "I have kept the faith", meaning that we have remained faithful to Jesus Christ, accepting him as the centre of our lives; and we have remained faithful to his way of life and to his values. Like Paul, we wait for "the crown of righteousness", which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give".