In introducing the previous volumes from Philemon (Mark and Matthew), brief mention was made of some of the personal notes about him, and with this third volume, we could say that Philemon is becoming quite a friend; we are getting to know him quite well, and I have the feeling, and I don’t think it’s just me, that his devotional life has deepened considerably when he meditates on Luke’s gospel. This shows up firstly in his increasingly extravagant praise of God and secondly in the keenness of insight.
It will be readily understood that if you’re working closely with a text translating it, you become very involved. Actually it becomes a little difficult to see the trees for the wood, so to speak; there is a large general impression left behind which isn’t immediately easy to pin down. The general impression is of the tremendous attribution of humility to God’s glory – that the glory of God is bound up with his humility. How wonderful this is! (A very frequent phrase in Philemon.) This seems to me ‘the wood,’ and it is a very good place to be; how strange it is that a growing appreciation of Jesus’ divinity, his humble divinity, should make an appreciation of his humanity so much more vivid – and it is just this, an appreciation of his humanity, that is at the heart of faith (1 Jn 4:2). However, it would help a review/introduction to identify some trees, and this, to grandiosely quote Hebrews, we will proceed to do.
One starting place would be a quotation, and the following, the beginning of Philemon’s meditation on Lk 20:20–26, seems to be a good sample, with the bonus of allowing a look at one of Daniel’s comments:
The money we need to pay taxes does not belong to us, it belongs to Caesar. We therefore do not have to give it to him as if it were an offering or a gift; we return it to him. So, the question is no longer whether it is permissible or not to give it because it is a debt. It is, in fact, a debt to render to others what is theirs.[1] We are therefore to fulfill what the Lord asks of us here and return to Caesar what is Caesar’s; this is simple because it is merely a question of taking a denarius from our purse; and if our purse does not contain it, we pray and trust because God will help us in one way or another.
But that’s not all; Jesus also requires us to render to God what is God’s. If it is relatively simple to render to Caesar what is his, on the other hand, what we must render to God is not a simple matter but a holy one. Paul helps us to move forward here, having clearly understood Jesus’ requirement, telling us that, in fact, what we owe to God is likewise a debt (Rom 13:7); we must return to him what belongs to him. So what do we owe him? Fear along with honor, Paul tells us, and even more fundamentally, we owe him love. Paul goes on to say that our debt to others is to love them (13:8); how much more do we owe it to God to love him. So, it is not a question of drawing from our purse but from our heart; nothing of what we owe God is in our bank account: fear, honor, love, everything is in our heart. Rendering all this to God is not the matter of a moment but of our whole life. Whether we have little or much, God does not ask more of us than what is in our heart; whether it is little or much, it is enough that it comes from our heart, and he deeply rejoices in it. Everything that is in our heart, this is what he expects: everything! Did he not give us everything by giving us what was most precious in his eyes, his beloved Son? He did not return him to us, but gave him, not as something due us, but in infinite grace, with infinite love. So, we give him everything, down to the smallest matters, starting, however, not with the biggest, but humbly, with the smallest. So, I ask myself, where should I begin?
1. It may seem to us that Philemon exaggerates by speaking here of “debt,” but the rest of his meditation shows that he is relying on Paul, who speaks of the “debt” of love (Rom 13:7–8). Can we be indebted to others if we don’t love them? This would mean that, if we do not love others, we deprive them of what is due to them, of what belongs to them, and that we are effectively in debt to them. Thinking that our love for others belongs to others and not to us is a sign of great humility. Love, in fact, is not our property; we cannot be proud of loving others as if we were being generous towards them; on the contrary, we have to dispossess ourselves of our love to the point of thinking that it belongs to others and that we have to return it to them by loving, otherwise we have a debt to them. By loving others, I return to them what belongs to them, otherwise I am in debt to them. Philemon, like Paul, has this humble outlook on love of neighbor. Both follow Jesus, who calls on us here to “give back” to Caesar and not to “offer” him his own money.
Elsewhere, I have mentioned the comparative difficulties of translating these books. In part, this is because much of what Philemon says is really quite dense in its reasoning, requiring close attention. The result is that it can’t be read quickly; there is a constant danger of reading over something important that can have considerable impact. Here is another very fine passage, this time concerning Luke 21:1-4:
We don’t know anything about this poor widow, but what Jesus says about her leads us to think that what was important for her was to fill the coins she was humbly depositing in the temple coffers with her love for God, a grateful love for God, from whom she received all she had, and whose love she perceived in all he gave her when she gleaned in the wheat fields and in the vineyards. She gathered what God had ordained be left for the poor like her (Lev 19:9–10), and she perceived in each grain of wheat or in each grape the love that God had for her. Likewise, when the Levites give her a portion of the tithes of the third year, however small (Deut 26:12), she knew that God had put this aside for her as well as for other widows, and she saw it as a sign of his love. Whenever she received this part of the tithe, her love for God grew, and her joy was then to give a little of it to God, a few lepta that she took from what she had received from him. In the eyes of others, she received very little, but for her, this little was a treasure of love drawn from the heart of God, and so she offered these two lepta with great thanksgiving. No one asked her to give this offering to God, no command prescribed it, no tradition constrained her; she gave freely, without looking for anyone’s approval. She had no wish to attract anyone’s attention, and yet Jesus saw her; she was unaware of him, fortunately so because she would have been embarrassed to be watched, especially by Jesus. In secret, she was giving in love these two lepta to God, wishing it to stay secretly confined to the heart of God, known to him alone, as the least of donors, the most unworthy of the one to whom she was giving. She gave with the humble joy of giving, a poor widow, to the one she loved above all, the one who gave her life with so much humble love. All this, this simple gesture, her giving, the two lepta, everything was so small, but her life was there in it, and she was happy and grateful.
O my soul, what teaching can I receive from this text, I who do not have so much as a single lepton? The Great Elder showed me the way in one of his letters, where he tells us that our life with God does not lie in money, because no monk has personal money, but in prayer, prayer which, when it comes to me, is unfortunately very poor. When I pray the offices with others, our prayer is rich in magnificent texts, but my personal prayer, in my cell, is very poor and unworthy of God. Sometimes I hesitate to offer it because I am ashamed. Fortunately, no one is witness to my praying because anyone who heard it would be ashamed. O my soul, in God’s grace, this text touches me, because it shows me that I must give proof of humility, agreeing to offer God my prayer, poor though it is. It touches me that Jesus was not ashamed of the two poor lepta offered by this widow; Jesus’ deep goodness makes my shame disappear and helps me to humbly offer my prayer to God, my repentance, my thanksgiving, my intercession, each of my prayers and psalms, wretched though they are when I think of the distractions that so impoverish them. I give thanks continually because this text about the widow helps me to humbly approach God and offer him my prayers.
Whether my praying is so very wretched doesn’t, after all, matter; this text shows that the important element lies in the love with which an offering is given to God; this is the most important thing. The love of this widow for God touches me because I too live only by God’s grace; whatever I glean in my readings and meditations, I receive from God. I receive everything from him, and I can see the love with which he gives it. His love is granted me day after day, and every day it causes my gratitude to grow. My prayer, however unworthy, is filled with this recognition. And in his infinite grace, he never stops giving me again and again, day after day; and, day after day, my love is strengthened, and it is with this love, this love of a poor monk, that I offer him my personal prayers in my cell which has nothing of the Jerusalem temple about it; but may God still do me the grace of honoring me with his presence. It was Jesus who made me understand this here and he who has convinced me that God does indeed grace me by being present in my cell, this grace which fills my prayers with thanksgiving (Mt 6:6). In his grace and with inexpressible humility, God comes to my cell, listening to my prayer and receiving it, just as Jesus received the offering of this widow, not considering the two lepta a miserable sum; for him, they were offered with a humble love that gave them more price than the important sums deposited by the rich. For me, Jesus’ attitude here is a miracle that gives me life and causes my love and thankfulness to grow . . .
For myself, this is so very encouraging. I trust these two excerpts give a good taster of Philemon; there are many such.