“Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

            There is a very popular quote that you likely have seen on Catholic t-shirts or alluded to in names of Catholic apostolates or retreats. It is attributed to St. Iranaeus, whose feast we celebrated last week. Iranaeus is one of the Apostolic Fathers – the first generation of Catholic bishops, in whom the memory of the Apostles was still alive. Iranaeus, the first bishop of Lyon, France, was the student of St. Polycarp, who was the student of St. John himself.

            The quote is: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” I have seen it used to inspire young men and women (and less young men and women!) to live the Gospel in its fullness, to find the abundant life promised by our Lord – the life that consists in virtue and grace. It’s a really inspiring idea – that the glory of God shines forth when we are living our true “best lives,” or “being the best version of yourself.”

            The problem is that St. Iranaeus never said or wrote, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” He wrote, “Gloria Dei vivens homo” – “the glory of God is a living man.” St. Iranaeus was writing against the heresy of Gnosticism, which demoted the Son to a secondary being, rather than a coequal member of the Trinity. Iranaeus emphasized that in the mystery of the Incarnation (which we talked about last Sunday), in the second Person of the Trinity – God the Son – taking on a real human nature, the very substance of the divinity is present in a living man (Christ’s human nature directly united to the divine nature – which is why He has a true human nature, without actually being a human person). Or, to put it more simply, the living man St. Iranaeus was writing about, who is the “fully alive” glory of God, is Jesus, not you.

            Whenever you see something that seems to affirm the values of the world attributed to the Scriptures or the saints, second thoughts are in order. What are the odds that a second-century bishop from the ancient Greek world, would sound like a trendy suburban mindfulness practitioner? (I heard that one Catholic institution was so excited by the prospects of “man fully alive,” that they translated the inaccurate English text back into Latin as their motto rather than looking up the true original.)

            What is the point of all this? The misuse of St. Iranaeus, and the obsession with “man fully alive,” shows us a botched attempt to Christianize the secular cult of self-fulfillment. It is a mindset where you can have all the things promised by the world as the good life, and have the Christian faith at the same time. How different is this vision of the Christian life, then, from the one held out to us today by St. Paul?

            St. Paul’s experience is drastically different than what seems to be envisioned by the “man fully alive” misquote. After his intense mystical experiences, even being mystically transported to heaven, to keep him from being what he calls “elated,” Paul experiences what he calls a “thorn in the flesh,” or “an angel of Satan” who beats him. Three times he intensely begs the Lord to remove this affliction or temptation to sin (we’re not sure what it is), but the Lord refuses, so that Paul might rely more perfectly on God’s grace, which is sufficient for him – Christ’s power within him being perfected by Paul’s weakness, his inability to overcome whatever that thorn was.

            If the cult of self-fulfillment version of Christianity (the “man fully alive” version of Christianity) were the Gospel version of Christianity, God would have left St. Paul on cloud nine after his mystical experiences. Many people claim to have received messages from God, or mystical revelations. The first test you can apply to see if what they have received is genuinely from the Lord is this: Have they suffered for what they have received? It’s not enough to know if that experience is from the Lord, but the witness of the Scriptures and the lives of the Saints is that no message from the Lord is authentic if it comes without suffering.

            Amidst his trial, St. Paul hears from the Lord: “My grace is sufficient for you.” This does not mean that we reject natural remedies – that we don’t seek out a doctor or a psychologist when faced with physical or mental illness. Rather, it means that Christ’s grace is sufficient to transform suffering into a lived experience of His life.

            The self-fulfillment, “man fully alive” version of the Gospel is a Christianity without the Cross. Christianity without the Cross is around us everywhere. It is in the prosperity Gospel that promises material advantage to everyone who attends that preacher’s church. It is in the worldly or saccharine worship that beats with the rhythms of the world – either the rhythms of the rock concert or the sentimentality of the Hallmark channel – rather than the encounter with the Sacred. And it is especially present when you and I believe that because we follow Christ, we will not have to suffer.

            Let’s be clear, though, about what this does not mean. The Gospel does not teach us that life is difficult, and we just have to grit our teeth and get through it stoically, hoping for a reward for our labors in the life to come. Rather, because the glory of God is a living man, Christ has entered into the human experience of suffering to redeem it. So, the real meaning of that famous quote from St. Iranaeus isn’t just the anti-modern killjoy I made it out to be at first. The real meaning is so much better!

            We said last Sunday that, in the Incarnation – God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ – Christ becomes poor so that we might become rich. Rich not in material possessions, but that we might come to possess something divine as we encounter the divine One who became man. Nowhere is He poorer than on the Cross, nowhere is He poorer than when He dies for our sins. Death is the ultimate human poverty, the loss of the immortality that would have been ours if not for Adam’s curse.

            Though we might not have had the mystical experiences that necessitated St. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, to keep him from being too elated at what he had received, each of us has a thorn in the flesh in our lives. It could be a chronic or mental illness, a child who has disappointed you, an irascible temperament, persecutions from those who ought to love you most. Whatever it is, whether you have begged God to take it away or fix it three times like St. Paul did, or many, many more times, the Lord’s message is the same: “That suffering is precisely where I am closest to you. My grace will be sufficient to transform your suffering into deeper joy, if you will allow me to show you the power in my weakness and poverty.”

            If you do not run away, if you resist the world’s call to have a Christianity without the Cross, you might even be able to say with St. Paul: “I am content with weaknesses, insults,

hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

XIV Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV