Today is the Feast Day of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, a Capuchin Franciscan friar, who was martyred during the Catholic Counter Reformation in 1622 (some 100 years after the start of the Protestant Reformation). Fidelis had been evangelizing in Graubünden, now a canton of eastern Switzerland, which at the time was a stronghold of Calvinism. He was meeting with a great deal of success in receiving people into full communion with the Catholic Church. While journeying on a local road he encountered soldiers under the command of the local Calvin leadership. They demanded Fidelis (Latin for “faithful”) renounce Catholicism, which he refused to do. The soldiers then murdered him. The Protestant minister who had participated in Fidelis’ martyrdom was converted by this circumstance, made a public renunciation of Calvinism and was received into the Catholic Church

In the first reading for today we hear St. Paul: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body, which is the Church.” The verse should give one pause… “filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ…” How are we to understand this passage? Was there something lacking in “the afflictions of Christ” on our behalf?

One always has to remember that St. Paul is evangelizing, giving witness – and that includes the hardships  which he endures in the course of his apostolic service. St Paul understands that, by bearing hardships on behalf of the people of Christ, he was entering into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, something that was also part of the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi and so many other saints.

It was this fellowship that St. Paul wished to know more fully (cf. Phil 3:10), not only in his relationship to Jesus, but also for others.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow. If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer. (2 Cor 1:3-6)

The sufferings which he endured in his ministry enabled him to sympathize with his fellow-believers when they suffered, and he was able also to share with them the comfort which he himself constantly experienced at the hand of God. Still, one still wonders what St Paul meant by “filling up what is lacking…”

Scholars, like F.F. Bruce, point out that there has always been a degree of fluidity between the individual and corporate in Hebrew thought. For example, during the Lenten season we often encounter passages from the “Suffering Servant” canticles from Isaiah. We associated these as prophetically pointing forward to Jesus’ passion and death. But in the canticles, “the servant” is first mentioned as Israel (Isaiah 49:3). But Israel as a whole proved to be a disobedient servant, and the prophecy of the Servant’s triumph through suffering was destined to find its fulfillment in one person.

“But the Servant’s identity, which narrowed in scope until it was concentrated in our Lord alone, has since his exaltation broadened out again and become corporate in his people. So, to take the most notable NT example, Paul and Barnabas at Pisidian Antioch announce to the members of the Jewish synagogue there that, in view of their opposition to the gospel, they will from now on turn to the Gentiles. And they find their authority for this course of action in the Servant Song just quoted (Isa. 49:6): ‘For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,  “I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth” ’ (Acts 13:47). That is to say, the Servant’s mission of enlightenment to the nations is to be carried on by the representatives of Christ. (Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians)

Paul having themselves received the peace which was made “through the blood of his cross,” now fulfilled their ministry by presenting that peace for acceptance by others. But in the fulfillment of that ministry they are exposed to sufferings for Christ’s sake, and these sufferings are their share in the afflictions of Christ.

“At the back of Paul’s mind is likely the rabbinical concept of the messianic birth pangs which were to be endured in the last days—from Paul’s new Christian perspective, in the period leading up to the parousia. Jesus, the Messiah, had suffered on the cross; now his people, the members of his body, had their quota of affliction to bear, and Paul was eager to absorb as much as possible of this in his own “flesh.” The suffering of affliction now was, for the followers of Christ, the prelude to glory at his advent, and such was the incomparable and “eternal weight of glory” to which they could look forward that the hardships of the present were described, in relation to it, as “this slight momentary affliction” (2 Cor. 4:17).” (Bruce)

Paul’s point is that the tribulation of the present world did not end with the death and Resurrection of Jesus. In that sense there is still something to “supply.” Until the Kingdom of God is fully realized in this world, we should expect to continue to experience in the flesh the tribulations which Christ experienced before his resurrection. Therefore, it can be said his ministers fill up what was missing yet in Christ’s suffering. As with Christ, so their suffering is undertaken for the sake of his body, the church