What is Lacking in Christ’s affliction

 Reflection on Today's Readings, Monday of 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year 1, September 6th, 2021
Texts: Col. 1:24-2:3; Ps. 62:6-7.9; Luke 6:6- 11
 There will always be suffering lacking in Christ’s affliction for the Church.   The suffering lacking in Christ’s affliction for the Church is meant to be completed by us. Put differently, it is our own share of the suffering of Christ that is lacking. It is the suffering we must bear to look like Christ. We are to be like Christ in all things, even in His suffering.
The suffering includes our toiling to fulfil our divine office and the sacrifice we pay in acquiring virtues.  The suffering mentioned in today's first reading is his toiling to fulfil his divine office. He says, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints."
Our Christian duties are what make our divine office. By our Christian duties we make up for what is lacking in Christ’s affliction for His body, the Church. We are encouraged today to take our Christian duties seriously so as to be like Christ in His suffering. We should always rejoice in carrying out our Christian duties so that we can say, like St. Paul, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake" Let us complete what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for His Church.
Our Christian duties include prayer and intercession, reading and meditating on God's word, helping the less privileged, spreading the goodnews of Christ, contributing to the development of the Church, etc. Every Christian has the divine office to love. We are to love God and our neighbours. We are to show love wherever we find ourselves; we are to do good always.
Today's gospel reading speaks of the encounter of Jesus Christ with the pharisees and scribes. The pharisees and the scribes refused to see salvation as the restoration of human person to the image and likeness of God, the fulness of life in God. The pharisees and scribes had made the law fail in its goal to return man to perfect condition in which God created him. St. Paul affirmed the fact that salvation is perfecting of human person in the likeness of Christ. He puts it thus: "Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ." We are not to lose sight of human person in whatever we do.

 
Lord Jesus Christ, we thank for revealing the true meaning of salvation to us; grant that we may not derail from the path of salvation. Amen.

Fr. Andrew Olowomuke