23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C (2025)

There is only one Sunday every three years that we hear from a book in the Bible known as the Letter to Philemon. Paul wrote this letter to a man named Philemon, around the year 63 during a period of imprisonment. The letter speaks of a runaway slave, named Onesimus, whom Paul is urging to return to Philemon. But Paul asks that Onesimus would be treated as a brother, rather than a slave.

Understandably, the issue of slavery hits home for us as people of this country, and it raises many important questions. Some have faulted Christianity for taking eighteen centuries to abolish slavery. But consider that in the context of Paul’s letter to Philemon, he is not writing from the position of an emperor, or a king, so he does not have the political power to make slavery illegal. But instead, he has the spiritual power to make slavery impossible to the soul and conscience of Philemon and every other Christian.^[1]

Admittedly, the history of the Church’s actions is spotty: there were many wicked men who did many wicked deeds, including slavery. On the other hand, the history of the Church’s teachings is not spotty but spotless: the Church never approved slavery; she sent missionaries to help slaves and often to buy their freedom, and she canonized as saints both slaves and those who saved them, but not slave masters. But she has always worked from inside out, not from outside in; she has primarily worked through an appeal to conscience and free choice, more than political or judicial systems, or threats of punitive consequences.^[2]

Yes, sadly, it took eighteen centuries for the seed that Christ and St. Paul planted to flower into laws against slavery, and yet it’s even more inexcusable that there is as much slavery in the world today as there ever was, though it’s slavery, not based on race, but largely on gender and against children. Human trafficking (which includes sex slavery and forced prostitution) is one of the largest and richest businesses in the world.^[3]

With it, pornography is a soft version of the very same use and dehumanization of women, and yes, sometimes children, and it is one of the most widespread and financially lucrative businesses in the world, not just in other countries, but also in ours. It is inexcusable that our actions have lagged behind our consciences for so long collectively.^[4]

But there is something every single person can do right now individually: to end all support of slavery in your life, in all its forms. For one, to cease engaging adult-content on our phones and computers. But also, this includes anything that reduces a human person to a subhuman thing to use, an object to be bought and sold (and, in the case of abortion, to be disposed of).^[5]

As you may know, some people justified slavery, declaring that the slaves were not actually human beings, so therefore it was not morally objectionable. While that sounds preposterous to us, we sometimes hear similar arguments made about those who suffer the forms of slavery in our times.

That is the point of the single most unpopular teaching of the Church today: the defense of human life and human nature, of human sexuality (especially womanhood and motherhood), and of the intrinsic value of every person as an end to be served, rather than as a thing to be used—and therefore, its stance against the so-called sexual revolution, which is too often not liberating, but enslaving.^[6]

Thankfully, we have progressed significantly against race slavery, but we have regressed significantly into sex slavery. Christians throughout the world must unite against this slavery until there is a new Emancipation Proclamation. St. Paul, pray for us as you prayed for Philemon to end the slaveries of our present world.^[7]

^[1] Kreeft, Peter. Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle C) (Food for the Soul Series Book 3) (pp. 625-626). Word On Fire. Kindle Edition.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Ibid.