Commented Bible Passages

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

Did you ever have one of those dreams in which you try to run but your legs are heavy and you don’t reach the goal? In this passage from the Letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul describes his existence as a race. For him, being on the move doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Paul was in prison, probably in Ephesus, when he wrote his Letter to the Philippians. It was twenty years since the Risen Christ had met him and called him to his service. And Paul could have been proud of what he had achieved as apostle. But he notes: “I have not yet reached the goal”. He doesn’t consider himself as having made it. He continues to “press on”.

The word Paul uses means literally to “run after”. Persecutors “run after” those they want to destroy, as did Paul when he persecuted the Church. But the same word expresses also the energy you put in the pursuit of what is good, as a Psalm says: “Seek peace, and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14), and as Paul does now, pursuing union with Christ with all his strength.

Why does running for twenty years without reaching the goal not frustrate Paul? Christ makes the difference. Paul says: I have not yet got hold of what I am looking for, but Christ has already got hold of me. There is a fundamental dissymmetry: while Paul is still running in order to win the prize, Christ has already finished his race and won. Christ has made Paul—and us too, and all humanity—his own.

Paul tells the secret of his running technique: “forgetting what lies behind” and “straining forward to what lies ahead”. “Forgetting what lies behind” is a biblical topic often linked to forgiveness. God’s forgiveness sets people free from the burden of a wicked past. God says: “I will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34), and adds as a consequence: “Do not remember former things (…), see I am creating something new” (Isaiah 43:18-19).

The permission to “forget what lies behind” makes our steps light. But forgetting the distance covered already makes us also poor: we turn out to be people who have just started, beginners, novices. The fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa wrote that we “go from beginning to beginning through beginnings without end”. There is freshness in ever new beginnings. But they also mean that you can never say you have made it.

In Paul’s running technique, “forgetting what lies behind” goes with “straining forward to what lies ahead”. The present matters, but so does the future. The present life is a race and a struggle, but it is lightened and quickened by the desire for what is to come: life with Christ and with each other.

When we grow weary and our steps heavy, let us not be discouraged. Let us admit that we are not people who have made it. We are always on the move, as the Proposals for 2020 say. Let us dare to be beginners, “forgetting what lies behind”. And may the fire of the Holy Spirit kindle in us that love which makes us hasten “to what lies ahead”.

 What is my goal? Where do I invest my energies?

 What can lighten our steps so we can run better?

 Do I dare to be a beginner, always at the start?

 What should we recall from the past; what is better to forget?