Reading for Monday, 2nd Week of Lent

Romans 1:1-15

This second week of Lent, we begin Paul's Letter to the Romans, and we will prayerfully study Romans until Holy Week.

Romans is unique among Paul's letters because this was the only letter that Paul wrote to a Christian community that he himself had not founded. In his letters to those communities, Paul is passionate, sometimes in love, sometimes in anger. "I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you," Paul implores the Galatians (Galatians 4: 19). "But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children," Paul writes of his ministry to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2: 7). Paul speaks to those churches with affection, born of his familiarity with them, but also a strong sense of authority, as someone to whom they are obligated for the Good News of salvation they received.

But to the Romans, Paul writes of his hope "that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine." As I said yesterday, the Christian community in Rome was an uneasy mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians that had existed for some years already. The Jewish Christians were highly suspicious of Paul's message of inclusion of Gentiles at a price they feared was too high.

Paul will answer those suspicions head on in due course. But for now, he acknowledges that the faith they share in Jesus Christ is more important than their disagreements. We have disagreements in the Church today. And they are no more to be swept under the rug than Paul's disagreements with his Jewish brothers and sisters. But anyone who calls Jesus Christ, "our Lord," is someone with whom "we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith."