SEXAGESIMA
ST PAUL glories in his heroic sufferings; looking back
on them, he would not be without them. Some of them are splendid
and dramatic, but others of them, even in retrospect, are boring and miserable:
appeasing Jewish spite or neutralising Christian treason, sitting up when
he was dropping with sleep, working on when he was tired and longed to
stop. Besides his own burdens, there are everyone else’s: ‘Who is
sick at heart and I am not sick, who falls from grace and I do not die
of shame?’ He takes his friends into his heart, both for good and
for evil, and in this above all he may justly glory. It is the living
out of our unity in Christ, that we should care for one another with the
heart of Christ, and by our prayers throw ourselves into the deepest concerns
of our friends. Let us not offer this holy sacrifice without praying
for some other man, as though we were that man himself. It is an
excellent thing, indeed, often to say all the prayers of the eucharist
in the place and person of another man saying them; being that man in God’s
sight, so far as we know how.
