A Reflection for Wednesday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s readings here.
“our qualification comes from God, who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit.” (2 Cor 3:5-6)
The season for letters of recommendation is upon us. Toward the end of high school, I remember the careful calculation I made in choosing the teacher who would write my testimonial letter that would recommend me for further studies or to suitable employees. It was an inordinately stressful time for me. I knew I needed to choose someone of a certain rank in the school. I was also adamant that it would need to be someone who had mastered the English language, could write concisely and convincingly, and someone who knew me well—someone who would vouch for me and attest to my character.
I chose someone for whom I had enormous respect—and not little fear of their intellectual brilliance and clout in the school hierarchy. But it was, I thought, a high-stakes gamble. This teacher was tough on me; so much so that I wasn’t always sure that this person liked me all that much. I, nonetheless, knew that it would be my best shot at getting a noteworthy recommendation letter that would impress anyone that read it. I was greatly relieved when the letter was handed to me and more than met with the expectations. It left me with a stratospheric, soaring sense about myself and provoked a flood of emotion in me.
Before setting out on their own respective missions, Paul’s followers were looking for commendation from the apostle himself, something that would attest to their authenticity and character.
In today’s first reading, Paul is confronted with questions surrounding letters of recommendation. It was customary that missionaries or prophets to foreign lands would present their credentials upon arrival and be vetted before their preaching and teaching was let loose on an unsuspecting public. Before setting out on their own respective missions, Paul’s followers were looking for commendation from the apostle himself, something that would attest to their authenticity and character. But Paul appears to want to challenge this prevailing culture. “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?” he asks, in the verse prior to where our reading starts today. “Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you?”
Paul was not averse to writing notes of commendation, as evinced in the Scriptures. Still, he wanted the early Christian community to interrogate the spirit that led them to think that presenting such a panegyric was the only thing that would guarantee their welcome, and that validated their worth. Paul encourages them to have greater confidence in themselves, and the testimony of their lives: “You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all,” he tells them. “Our qualification comes from God, who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.”
As I contemplate Paul’s strategy, I wonder what it would have been like if my teacher had encouraged me in similar words, rather than by writing platitudes about me that I could furnish upon request to further my career. I suppose that is not the way of the world. My teacher had to play to the market that needs lists of measurable achievements to commodify a person’s worth. Then again, if I think about it more carefully, and with greater distance now, my teacher had repeatedly encouraged me to see those qualities in myself, but he knew in writing an effusive letter of recommendation that I would read it over and over, and that reality might sink in more deeply over time. “For,” as Paul says, “if what was going to fade was glorious”—those momentary feelings of elation when I received the letter—“how much more will what endures be glorious”—the confidence that has built in me 30 years later, albeit with some lapses.
