“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run,
that ye may obtain.”
Those words from St. Paul can often confuse us, because if we take them in a literalistic
sense, we can wind up thinking he is saying that only one person ever in the whole
history of mankind will be saved. It’s kind of the extreme version of “Christ died for
me…and no one else.” But of course, when we look at it in the context of not only all of
St. Paul’s teachings but in fact the whole Bible, that’s not what the Christian Faith
teaches. Rather, the point that St. Paul is making here is simply not to practice a
halfhearted Christianity. He is teaching the Corinthians (and us) to run along the
Christian way in order to win—not to lose, not to come in second, but to win. He is
saying that if you are practicing a halfhearted Christianity, you are practicing to lose.
What ultimately matters is not where you start out but where you end up. That is why
even St. Paul himself says that he keeps his body under subjection, he keeps himself in
training, lest that, after he has preached to others, he himself should wind up being a
castaway. Rather he, as he instructs us to do, practices a wholehearted Christianity.
Jesus Christ is everything to him—not just one of the most important things to him, but
the most important thing to him. He runs in order to win, not to come in second.
Nowadays the Olympics are very nice and sweet and give you three medals, gold, silver,
and bronze, but in the ancient world there was only one winner—like Jerry Seinfeld said,
second place is just another name for the number one loser. It was more like the Super
Bowl than the modern Olympics—there’s no second place in the Super Bowl. So St.
Paul tells us our faith is something that we always have to be working on for it to be a
2
saving faith. We can’t just get our ticket punched and then sit around, as it were, resting
on our laurels.
For this is that Sunday when we have an Epistle that teaches us that it is never too late to
be lost, and a Gospel that teaches us that it is never too late to be saved. And the Gospel
makes the same point, that it doesn’t matter where (or when) you started, but where you
end up at the close of the day. And parenthetically, remember once again that the Greek
coin “denarius,” translated “a penny” in the King James Version, doesn’t really mean one
cent, but rather a good, honest pay for a day’s work. That’s why the workers who toiled
all day were upset—not that they didn’t get paid enough (which they did, and which was
what they had contracted for at the beginning of the day), but that those bums who only
worked one measly hour got paid for a whole day’s labor. They said, “We’ve been
working all day—we’ve been in training—and then these upstarts just burst in at the last
minute and win the crown too.” Instead of rejoicing in how all-encompassing the grace
of their Master is, they choose to wallow in envy and resentment; and resentment,
remember, is a poison I drink hoping it will kill you. It’s like when we gripe, “I can’t
believe that bastard converted on his deathbed—I wanted him to rot in hell after what he
did to me.” We think that somehow our reward is dependent upon or qualified by its
being better than his over there, who didn’t deserve it. Well, I’ve got news for you—
none of us deserves it. But once again to show the parallel between the Epistle and the
Gospel, both passages teach us not to judge our spiritual life, either positively or
negatively, against anyone else’s. What a relief it is that we don’t have to worry about
measuring up to each other; we only have to worry about measuring up to Jesus Christ,
3
which we only do by being covered by his precious Blood—in other words, by his grace.
Are we continuing to be more and more open to his grace, is our soul continuously being
washed by his precious Blood? That’s the kind of question we need to be asking
ourselves in our spiritual exercises, not, “Am I as holy as that saint over there?” or
conversely, “Am I holier than that wretch over there?”
For that kind of off-kilter self-evaluation leads to one of the two vices that counter on
opposite sides the virtue of hope. And those are despair and presumption. Despair is a
lack of hope in God, and presumption is an excess of hope in ourselves. Despair says,
“I’ll never be holy, so why bother even trying?” while presumption says, “Well, I’m holy
enough as it is, so why bother to keep working at it?” St. Augustine of Hippo said, “Do
not despair—one of the thieves crucified with Christ was saved. Do not presume—one
of the thieves crucified with Christ was lost.” I think those of us active in the Church
need to be more on watch for presumption. “I’ve gone to church my whole life, I know
how to explain the Trinity and the Incarnation, I know when to make the sign of the cross
at all the right places—it’s those sinners over there that just walked in the door who need
to work on themselves, not me.” Well, that is a halfhearted Christianity that convinces
itself it’s wholehearted, as opposed to the halfhearted Christianity of despair that
convinces itself it’s no-hearted. And the thing you can say a little bit in defense of
despair is that it tends to be the result of human weakness, unlike presumption, which
tends to be the result of human pride.
4
But whichever of those two temptations beset us (and it may be both in different ways
and at different times), our Christian training—prayer, confession, spiritual direction,
Bible reading, acts of mercy and charity—serves to wean us away from those temptations
and instead get our whole heart pumping, as it were, that precious Blood of Christ
throughout our spiritual system. It’s not so much the quantity of our training, our work in
the vineyard, but the quality. When our Lord returns, he is going to take an account of
what we have done with the grace he has given us—not of how much grace he has given
us, but what we have done with whatever manifestation of his grace he, in his infinite
wisdom and mercy, has endued us with. He is going to see whether our whole being is
infused with his Blood, whether our heart so vigorously pumps his Blood through our
system that we become a reflection of himself back. And so at the end of the day, having
brought ourselves under subjection by his grace, may we receive that fullness of grace he
has promised us whether we have worked twelve hours or one, may we run that race and
humbly receive upon our heads from his nail-pierced hand that crown incorruptible.