18 October 2024 2 Timothy 4:10-17b

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Please read the passage before reading the commentary.

We have a reading from the second letter of Paul to Timothy.  May people celebrate today as the feast of St Luke, the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.  He is mentioned by name in Colossians, Philemon and 2 Timothy.  The reading from 2 Timothy was chosen for St Luke because it mentions Luke by name.  Luke is one who has stuck by Paul in his troubles.

Paul often closes his letters with lists of people for whom he is grateful, whom he greets, and sometimes whom he reprimands.  What is the purpose of these names?  These are real people.  Some are those whom the letter’s recipients already know or whom Paul would like them to know.  The list of names also serves to highlight and emphasize the Christian community, that the community is more than Paul and his audience, that Paul, those listed, and the recipients are part of a larger community of believers.

We need community.  We do not live alone.  Even hermits and those who go off by themselves for religious purposes, take their communities with them.  They pray for these communities and are united with their home communities, and with the Church in their praying and their living.  They go off, not to desert or avoid the communities, but to support them.

Let us suppose that we are writing a letter, like this one to Timothy or one to the Ephesians.  Whom among our relatives and friends would we mention with approval or with commendation?

We live in many communities, family, neighborhood, school, Church, town, work.  In each we tend to know or appreciate some more than others.  Perhaps we should be making lists of all these people and use is as a basis for prayer.  I remember Dalton Eugene Common from my first neighborhood eighty years ago.  Should he not be on my prayer list?  Whom should you put on your prayer list?