Every Sunday we have three readings at Mass. The first is often from the Old Testament, the second often from the epistles of Paul and the third from one of the gospels.

Usually we look at the gospel, but today let’s look at the short second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, which begins “I know how to live in humble circumstances.” We all have to live at times in humble circumstances, so what can we learn from St. Paul?

The church in Philippi to whom Paul writes his letter was a Roman town in northeastern Greece that Paul visited on his second missionary journey. There’s a wonderful account of Paul’s visit to Philippi in the 16th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. ( Acts 16: 12-40) 

When he came to a new town, Paul usually went to a Jewish synagogue to preach the gospel, but he doesn’t do that in Philippi. Evidently there are hardly any Jews there, so Paul went down to the river where there was a place of prayer, and among the women praying there he meets a woman named Lydia, a wealthy business woman who receives God’s word.  She and her household were baptized, and afterwards she persuades Paul and those with him to stay at her house. 

At this place of prayer Paul also meet another woman, a slave and a fortune-teller. He frees her from an evil spirit, which so enraged the men who owned her that they had Paul arrested, beaten and thrown into jail as a Jewish trouble-maker. 

In the jail in Philippi Paul converts the jail keeper and his family during an earthquake. Eventually he gets freed and goes to another town.

The letter to the Philippians is a letter Paul writes to Lydia and the Christians in her house and to the jailor and the Christians in his house. He’s telling them he’s in jail again – Paul was in jail a good number of times.  Probably the jail is in Rome, where Paul was under house arrest, shortly before he was put to death.

Overall, Paul in his letter indicates that he’s doing all right.  That’s what the short section of the letter read today says:

Brothers and sisters:

I know how to live in humble circumstances;

I know also how to live with abundance.

In every circumstance/ and in all things

I have learned the secret of being well fed 

and of going hungry,

of living in abundance/ and of being in need. 

I can do all things in him who strengthens me. 

Paul’s “in humble circumstances”, he writes to the Philippians, but he’s doing OK. 

We are living in very difficult days, for sure,  our world is not a peaceful world at all. So we should ask what was Paul’s secret – how do you live in humble circumstances? How do you live in a world that seems to be falling apart? How do you live in a world of one war after another? How do you live in a world where even the natural world seems unstable, with its storms, its floods, its climate swings?

First of all, as we see from his letter, Paul feels God is with him, strengthening him. His Letter to the Philippians has that beautiful hymn which says that Jesus did not hold on to the form of God but took on the form of a slave. He humbled himself, he lived in humble circumstances, even dying on a Cross. He entered into the darkest places of human life. 

Paul must have felt Jesus was with him in the dark places he found himself. God was with him. Even in his need, in humble circumstances, he wasn’t alone. Jesus was with him sustaining him and promising resurrection, raising him up.

Another thing we might learn from Paul’s letter. He keeps thanking people for supporting him. He knew the value of friends and human support. That’s something we should know too, how to reach out to others to support them and to find our support in them. We need to stick together. Other people keep us going. 

Faith keeps us going. Paul at the end of his letter speaks of the “supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He depends on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his sufferings

During these difficult days, we need be believe in God who made our world, who guides our world, who saves our world.  We shouldn’t forget God is with us. We need to keep it in mind. 

If we do those things, we’ll also experience Paul’s secret: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”