Knights of Columbus Beaver Valley Chapter Electronic Books

The New Jerusalem Bible with Apocrypha
Phillipians

Philippians is a joyful piece of writing, containing news and messages of friendship; the Philippians were the only church from whom Paul would accept gifts. It also has some valuable reflections on Paul's vital union with Christ in his sufferings. A most important fragment is the early hymn of Christ's exaltation quoted by Paul (2:6-11); it contrasts Christ's obedience and elevation with Adam's pride and fall. Dating is difficult, and indeed it may be a collection of three short letters: A = 4:10-20; B = 1:1-3 + 4:2-9; C = 3:2-4:1.

THE LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CHURCH AT PHILIPPI

Address

¹Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all God's holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with their presiding elders and the deacons.²Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving and prayer

³I thank my God whenever I think of you,⁴and every time I pray for you all, I always pray with joy⁵for your partnership in the gospel from the very first day up to the present.⁶I am quite confident that the One who began a good work in you will go on completing it until the Day of Jesus Christ comes.⁷It is only right that I should feel like this towards you all, because you have a place in my heart, since you have all shared together in the grace that has been mine, both my chains and my work defending and establishing the gospel.⁸For God will testify for me how much I long for you all with the warm longing of Christ Jesus;⁹it is my prayer that your love for one another may grow more and more with the knowledge and complete understanding¹⁰that will help you to come to true discernment, so that you will be innocent and free of any trace of guilt when the Day of Christ comes,¹¹entirely filled with the fruits of uprightness through Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God.

Paul's own circumstances

¹²Now I want you to realise, brothers, that the circumstances of my present life are helping rather than hindering the advance of the gospel.¹³My chains in Christ have become well known not only to all the Praetorium, ^{* [The headquarters of the Praetorian guard wherever Paul is captive (Ephesus, Caesarea, Rome?).]} but to everybody else,¹⁴and so most of the brothers in the Lord have gained confidence from my chains and are getting more and more daring in announcing the Message without any fear.¹⁵It is true that some of them are preaching Christ out of malice and rivalry; but there are many as well whose intentions are good;¹⁶some are doing it out of love, knowing that I remain firm in my defence of the gospel.¹⁷There are others who are proclaiming Christ out of jealousy, not in sincerity but meaning to add to the weight of my chains.¹⁸But what does it matter? Only that in both ways, whether with false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed, and for that I am happy;¹⁹and I shall go on being happy, too, because I know that this is what will save me, ^{* [Jb 13:16.]} with your prayers and with the support of the Spirit of Jesus Christ;²⁰all in accordance with my most confident hope and trust that I shall never have to admit defeat, but with complete fearlessness I shall go on, so that now, as always, Christ will be glorified in my body, whether by my life or my death.²¹Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then death would be a positive gain.²²On the other hand again, if to be alive in the body gives me an opportunity for fruitful work, I do not know which I should choose.²³I am caught in this dilemma: I want to be gone and to be with Christ, and this is by far the stronger desire-²⁴and yet for your sake to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need.²⁵This much I know for certain, that I shall stay and stand by you all, to encourage your advance and your joy in the faith,²⁶so that my return to be among you may increase to overflowing your pride in Jesus Christ on my account.

Fight for the faith

²⁷But you must always behave in a way that is worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come to you and see for myself or whether I only hear all about you from a distance, I shall find that you are standing firm and united in spirit, battling, as a team with a single aim, for the faith of the gospel,²⁸undismayed by any of your opponents. This will be a clear sign, for them that they are to be lost, and for you that you are to be saved.²⁹This comes from God, for you have been granted the privilege for Christ's sake not only of believing in him but of suffering for him as well;³⁰you are fighting the same battle which you saw me fighting for him and which you hear I am fighting still.

Preserve unity in humility

²So if in Christ there is anything that will move you, any incentive in love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any warmth or sympathy-I appeal to you,²make my joy complete by being of a single mind, one in love, one in heart and one in mind.³Nothing is to be done out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind everyone should give preference to others,⁴everyone pursuing not selfish interests but those of others.⁵Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus:⁶Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped.⁷But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being,⁸he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.⁹And for this God raised him high, and gave him the name which is above all other names;¹⁰so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus¹¹and that every tongue should acknowledge ^{* [Is 45:23.]} Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Work for salvation

¹²So, my dear friends, you have always been obedient; your obedience must not be limited to times when I am present. Now that I am absent it must be more in evidence, so work out your salvation in fear and trembling.¹³It is God who, for his own generous purpose, gives you the intention and the powers to act.¹⁴Let your behaviour be free of murmuring and complaining¹⁵so that you remain faultless and pure, unspoilt children of God surrounded by a deceitful and underhand brood, ^{* [Dt 32:5.]} shining out among them like bright stars in the world,¹⁶proffering to it the Word of life. Then I shall have reason to be proud on the Day of Christ, for it will not be for nothing that I have run the race and toiled so hard.¹⁷Indeed, even if my blood has to be poured as a libation over your sacrifice and the offering of your faith, then I shall be glad and join in your rejoicing-¹⁸and in the same way, you must be glad and join in my rejoicing.

The mission of Timothy and Epaphroditus

¹⁹I hope, in the Lord Jesus, to send Timothy to you soon, so that my mind may be set at rest when I hear how you are.²⁰There is nobody else that I can send who is like him and cares as sincerely for your well-being;²¹they all want to work for themselves, not for Jesus Christ.²²But you know what sort of person he has proved himself, working with me for the sake of the gospel like a son with his father.²³That is the man, then, that I am hoping to send to you immediately I can make out what is going to happen to me;²⁴but I am confident in the Lord that I shall come myself, too, before long.²⁵Nevertheless I thought it essential to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow-worker and companion-in-arms since he came as your representative to look after my needs;²⁶because he was missing you all and was worrying because you had heard that he was ill.²⁷Indeed he was seriously ill and nearly died; but God took pity on him-and not only on him but also on me, to spare me one grief on top of another.²⁸So I am sending him back as promptly as I can so that you will have the joy of seeing him again, and that will be some comfort to me in my distress.²⁹Welcome him in the Lord, then, with all joy; hold people like him in honour,³⁰because it was for Christ's work that he came so near to dying, risking his life to do the duty to me which you could not do yourselves.

³Finally, brothers, I wish you joy in the Lord.

The true way of Christian salvation

To write to you what I have already written before is no trouble to me and to you will be a protection.²Beware of dogs! Beware of evil workmen! Beware of self-mutilators!³We are the true people of the circumcision since we worship by the Spirit of God and make Christ Jesus our only boast, not relying on physical qualifications,⁴although, I myself could rely on these too. If anyone does claim to rely on them, my claim is better.⁵Circumcised on the eighth day of my life, I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. In the matter of the Law, I was a Pharisee;⁶as for religious fervour, I was a persecutor of the Church; as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, I was faultless.⁷But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses.⁸Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss. For him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ⁹and be given a place in him, with the uprightness I have gained not from the Law, but through faith in Christ, an uprightness from God, based on faith,¹⁰that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection, and partake of his sufferings by being moulded to the pattern of his death,¹¹striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead.¹²Not that I have secured it already, nor yet reached my goal, but I am still pursuing it in the attempt to take hold of the prize for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.¹³Brothers, I do not reckon myself as having taken hold of it; I can only say that forgetting all that lies behind me, and straining forward to what lies in front,¹⁴I am racing towards the finishing-point to win the prize of God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus.¹⁵So this is the way in which all of us who are mature should be thinking, and if you are still thinking differently in any way, then God has yet to make this matter clear to you.¹⁶Meanwhile, let us go forward from the point we have each attained.¹⁷Brothers, be united in imitating me. Keep your eyes fixed on those who act according to the example you have from me.¹⁸For there are so many people of whom I have often warned you, and now I warn you again with tears in my eyes, who behave like the enemies of Christ's cross.¹⁹They are destined to be lost; their god is the stomach; they glory in what they should think shameful, since their minds are set on earthly things.²⁰But our homeland is in heaven and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,²¹who will transfigure the wretched body of ours into the mould of his glorious body, through the working of the power which he has, even to bring all things under his mastery.

⁴So then, my brothers and dear friends whom I miss so much, my joy and my crown, hold firm in the Lord, dear friends.

Last advice

²I urge Euodia, and I urge Syntyche to come to agreement with each other in the Lord;³and I ask you, Syzygus, really to be a 'partner' ^{* [Syzygus means 'yoke-fellow' or 'partner'.]} and help them. These women have struggled hard for the gospel with me, along with Clement and all my other fellow-workers, whose names are written in the book of life.⁴Always be joyful, then, in the Lord; I repeat, be joyful.⁵Let your good sense be obvious to everybody. The Lord is near.⁶Never worry about anything; but tell God all your desires of every kind in prayer and petition shot through with gratitude,⁷and the peace of God which is beyond our understanding will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.⁸Finally, brothers, let your minds be filled with everything that is true, everything that is honourable, everything that is upright and pure, everything that we love and admire-with whatever is good and praiseworthy.⁹Keep doing everything you learnt from me and were told by me and have heard or seen me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Thanks for help received

¹⁰As for me, I am full of joy in the Lord, now that at last your consideration for me has blossomed again; though I recognise that you really did have consideration before, but had no opportunity to show it.¹¹I do not say this because I have lacked anything; I have learnt to manage with whatever I have.¹²I know how to live modestly, and I know how to live luxuriously too: in every way now I have mastered the secret of all conditions: full stomach and empty stomach, plenty and poverty.¹³There is nothing I cannot do in the One who strengthens me.¹⁴All the same, it was good of you to share with me in my hardships.¹⁵In the early days of the gospel, as you of Philippi well know, when I left Macedonia, no church other than yourselves made common account with me in the matter of expenditure and receipts. You were the only ones;¹⁶and what is more, you have twice sent me what I needed in Thessalonica.¹⁷It is not the gift that I value most; what I value is the interest that is mounting up in your account.¹⁸I have all that I need and more: I am fully provided, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the offering that you sent, a pleasing smell, ^{* [Gn 8:21.]} the sacrifice which is acceptable and pleasing to God.¹⁹And my God will fulfil all your needs out of the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.²⁰And so glory be to God our Father, for ever and ever. Amen.

Greetings and final wish

²¹My greetings to every one of God's holy people in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send you their greetings.²²All God's holy people send you their greetings, especially those of Caesar's household.²³May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

The Beaver Valley Chapter of the Knights of Columbus graciously thanks Duquesne University and Father Sean Hogan, C.S.Sp. for sponsoring our Knights of Columbus Beaver Valley Chapter web page.