There is a wonderful story from a Catholic novel that helps capture the meaning of today’s second reading.  The novel is Graham Green’s The Power and the Glory, a story set in revolutionary Mexico, a story about a priest there, whose life was in constant danger because of the anti-Catholic nature of the revolution going on around him.  Being a priest was a capital offense, the punishment for which was the firing squad.  But this one priest, the main character of the story, this priest decided to make his way to freedom... after he had fulfilled a promise to visit certain people as their priest.  Well, over and over again, as he tries to leave, the needs of his people around him hold him back.  He cannot leave them; he cannot say no to their requests for the Sacraments; he cannot stop doing what he really is, a priest.  Of course he’s eventually caught, tried, and sentenced to death.  And as he awaits death, he begins to reflect on his life, on his many failings and weaknesses.  Reading about his life in the novel, you would have never, at first, expected great things from this man.  But as he stands before the firing squad, and as he focuses his last bit of time upon the God he is about face, the reader realizes in a most profound and startling way that here, this man, is well on his way to being a saint.  He is a man made holy not by his own strength, but by the strength of God the man allowed to work in him in spite of his weaknesses.

     This, I believe, is what St. Paul is getting at in today’s second reading, where he proclaims:  “I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.”  St. Paul’s weakness was not the same as the priest’s in Green’s novel, but it was rather something even more potentially damaging to the spiritual life:  that he would begin to indulge in a kind of self-congratulation for all that God had revealed to him as an Apostle.  St. Paul’s temptation was to spiritual pride, the deadliest of sins.  And so God, in His great mercy, allowed Paul to be afflicted in some way -- we are not sure how -- so that this pride would be checked and conquered; so that Paul would be reminded that all which he accomplished was through the power and strength of God, working through human weakness.

     Is this not the same in the Church herself?  Something like every individual Christian life, the Church encompasses both divine strength and human weakness.  The modern world, or I should say especially the modern world, relishes the role of pointing out the Church’s human weaknesses; we Catholics admit them openly, or should.  But as the world mocks our failings, it also forgets or ignores the great signs of God’s strength in the Church; if it is easy and fun to laugh at our sins, what does the world make of our saints?  How is it explained, the great depth of personal integrity and the glory of the holiness of the Blessed Virgin, of a St. Francis, of a St. Catherine of Siena?  How else to explain except by the power and goodness of God the life of Mother Theresa?  Oh yes, there are weaknesses, human weaknesses, everywhere in the Church, but take a look at all the signs of God’s strength! – the witness of the martyrs through the ages, the high moral teaching of the Church helping protect people from their human weaknesses, the beauty of the Church’s worship and art, the loveliness of the saints, the means of grace that are the holy Sacraments.  Surely, the Church herself is the sign of God’s strength working amazingly through human weakness.

     None of this should really surprise us.  Our God not only has deigned to make us strong in our humanity, but He seems to relish our very weaknesses as a means to that end.  For in order to plant His divine power and goodness in our hearts, He first came among us surrounded with signs of weakness:  a baby born in Bethlehem, the smallest of towns, into a poor family, growing up -- as we read in today’s Gospel -- a working man in a place known for poverty and insignificance.  And is not the very sign of our Faith, the thing that most distinguishes us, the crucifix itself -- that awful yet beautiful portrayal of God, in human flesh, suffering for our sins and dying in agony?  I myself have observed  people from non-Christian backgrounds stand in awe before Michelangelo’s Pieta, that most glorious statue of our Lady holding in her arms the dead body of her Son.  Talk about a depiction of weakness... and yet from that very picture of agony and deep sorrow flows forth a power and strength big enough to break a human heart so as to make it divinely strong.

     The lesson for us in all this is both challenging and immensely comforting.  Challenging in that God wants to perfect us by His grace, His strength, even as God works through our weaknesses.  “My grace,” God assured St. Paul, “is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  And this is all very comforting, for we realize that God never despises our weaknesses, not at all, but sees them, everyone of them, if we allow it, as opportunities for divine power to accomplish in us the perfection that God demands.  For us, then, no envy at the signs of God’s strength in others, nor any hateful enjoyment of others’ failings, and no despair over our own failings.  Rather, like St. Paul, all together as members of Christ’s family, we boast, yes even boast, most gladly of our weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with us.  Our weaknesses:  no excuses for sin, but still opportunities for God to teach us His strength.  “Therefore, I am content,” wrote St. Paul, “with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”