NOTES for Rom 15:25-26

Paul writes that he is carrying aid to the Christians of Jerusalem and Judea, collected in the churches of Macedonia and Achaia. And for the apostle this is not simply something he does along the way, as we sometimes today pass along a package to friends or acquaintances of our friends when traveling to another city for business or a private visit.

For Paul, taking the donations collected for the Jerusalem church is part of his apostolic ministry. And this attitude of his toward such donations reminds us again that works of mercy for Christians are not only a question of material or social support for those to whom they give such support. In church life there is no social ministry in a pure form; the Church knows only spiritual ministries.

And help to those who need it is a spiritual ministry no less than preaching, mission, or apostleship. This is understandable: Christian life is not divided into "spiritual" and "worldly." Such a division would be possible if we were one thing in church, another on the street, and still some third, fourth, and fifth thing at work, among acquaintances, on vacation, and in other places where we have to be. In fact, this often is exactly how it is, and then what are called religious obligations enter our life.

Religious obligations, one of which, and a most important one, Christians consider to be "works of mercy," or "social ministry." There is nothing surprising here. If our "spiritual" life exists separately from the "worldly," there must necessarily be a link between them. "Spiritual" life penetrates into the "worldly," and at this intersection there appears what we perceive as our "religious obligations."

Obligations that may be a joy to us or a burden, but which must nevertheless be fulfilled insofar as they are obligations; having fulfilled them, we receive the right to "spiritual" life in church, to prayer, to participation in the breaking of bread, and simply to communion with God as such. If you do not fulfill religious obligations, do not go to church! Of course, in practice everything is not quite so, and the practice of church life has long since developed mechanisms that presuppose a certain compromise between the right to communion with God and the scope of those very religious obligations. But the logic still does not change; the principle of the interconnection of "spiritual" life and "worldly" life remains the same.

But for Paul, life is not divided into "spiritual" and "worldly." Passing on the collected donations for him is not social ministry, but the same act of love as all his apostolic ministry and his entire Christian path. A path on which there was no division into "spiritual" and "worldly," and therefore there were no religious obligations that included works of mercy. There was the Kingdom and its life. One and indivisible.