Human frailty: we have a ways to go

           There is an admonition in the   Desiderata that tells us not to compare ourselves to others because there will always be those who are lesser or greater than ourselves. You could easily hear me on these pages expounding the virtues of St. Paul and stating the enormous impact he had on Christianity, perhaps second only to Jesus himself. I’d be remiss if my compliments bordered on making Paul sound even nearly as great as Christ himself. Paul after all is just a man.

       Paul is annoyed that the clairvoyant 

women in today’s Scripture passage is 

outing him for what he really is, 

‘a slave of the Most High who proclaims 

to you a way of salvation’.  It’s not a lie, 

she is just a pest to Paul and as a human, 

Paul is annoyed. Paul has a human reaction

and pays dearly for it. How rich and real are

these writings. They convey Paul’s humanity, 

frailty and imperfection.

       How are we going in the recognition, 

realization and acceptance of our own very

human faults and frailties? Sometimes I think 

we can be pretty high minded about our nature.

How’s our God complex coming along? 

       I often note our mission in life is to 

embrace our humanity, whom God made us
 to be. It bears noting that in our humanity we are 

loved by God but we must also remember that 
we are not perfect. Paul wasn’t, neither are we.

Acts 16:16-24

 One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.

 But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’ The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.hj