Father Mike Schmitz

Paul to the Philippians.

This is the epistle of joy, the letter of joy.

He just says, I want you, please rejoice at all times.

I say to you, rejoice.

I don't even care if people are preaching Jesus because they want to make me look bad.

Even in this, I don't care.

Only that he says this in verse 18, only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.

And in that I rejoice.

St.

Paul here in chapter one, he demonstrates this thing that is called apatheia.

And that's not the same thing as apathy.

Apathy can be a negative kind of apathy, a negative kind of I don't care, like whatever, I'm just in a negative way.

But there's also this positive apatheia, this positive apathy, which means I am indifferent to whatever the Lord wants.

Not apathy in terms of I'm just kind of, yeah, unfeeling or uncaring, but apatheia would be this virtue, the virtue of indifference that would say whether God causes me to have a long life or a short one, whatever he wants.

I'm indifferent.

If he wants me to have health or sickness, I'm indifferent, whatever he wants.

If he wants me to have wealth or poverty, I don't care, whatever he wants.

This kind of holy indifference, this holy apatheia is what Paul demonstrates here in the first letter of St.

Paul to the Philippians, where he says, "'I know, I shall not be at all ashamed, "'but that with full courage, now as always, "'Christ will be honored in my body, "'whether by life or by death.

"'For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.'"