“From now on, let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.”  The Greek word for “marks” is “stigmata”.  This statement by St. Paul today in our second reading has caused some people to speculate that perhaps Paul had received the special mystical gift of the stigmata.  The stigmata are a sharing in the wounds suffered by Jesus in his passion.  St. Padre Pio is a recent example of someone who was given this mystical gift.  St. Francis of Assisi also received the stigmata during a time of intense prayer and retreat in the mountain region of La Verna.  In the stigmatic, open wounds appear in the area where Christ suffered his five wounds, each hand and foot and in the side.  These wounds are painful and bleed and yet the wounds do not become infected and are said to give off a pleasant aroma.  Some saints have claimed to have invisible stigmata in which they suffer from the wounds but the wounds do not have an external appearance.

     In the Old Covenant established on Mt. Sinai with the people of Israel, there was a seal that was a visible sign of the Covenant that each person bore on their bodies.  This sign was referred to as circumcision.  During the early years of the New Covenant Church there was quite a bit of discussion over the mark of circumcision that was the sign of belonging to a covenantal people.  Judaizers in the early Church insisted that Christians still had an obligation to be circumcised.  Paul argued that the mandate of circumcision in the Old Covenant no longer applied to the Christians who had entered into a new Covenant with Christ in baptism that was established in the blood of Christ.  Paul would argue that if a person were to be circumcised that this would obligate them to be under the Law of the Old Covenant and that they would then have to observe all of the ancient kosher and Sabbath laws.  They would then be looking to the Law as a means to salvation rather than to the grace of the Passion of Christ.  They would be looking to the works of the Law to justify them rather than the work of grace accomplished by Christ on the cross and shared with his disciples through the gift of the Spirit.  Prophets of the Old Covenant had often spoken of God’s desire that circumcision be applied to a person’s heart and not just their bodies.  The mark or seal of the New Covenant was an interior seal that marked a person’s soul, signifying a permanent change in a person’s ontological character (or in simpler terms, the person became a new person in Christ).  This seal was accomplished by the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Spirit in the person’s soul.

     Paul was so mystically identified with the suffering of Jesus Christ that it would not be surprising that he might bear the marks of the stigmata on his body as well as on his soul.  In his letter to the Galatians he asserts, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  The heart of the gospel that Paul preached was the Cross of Christ Jesus.  To him the only thing important in the life of the Christian is that they had truly become a “new creation” in Christ and that they lived their lives in a new way, a way that leaned heavily on the work of grace accomplished through the Spirit of God which was constantly at work transforming the believer more and more into the image of the glorious, risen Christ.

     Every Christian “bears the marks of Jesus” on their soul through baptism and confirmation.  These marks are called “ontological” marks because they cannot be changed.  They are signs of our new life in Christ.  For this reason a person cannot be baptized more than once.  Valid baptism confers an ontological mark or seal on a person’s soul whereby they are sealed with the blood of Christ.  Likewise a person can receive the sacrament of confirmation only once in their life.  The other sacrament that has an ontological character and can be received only once, becoming a permanent change in the person’s soul, is the sacrament of Holy Orders.   A priest can leave his ministry and be laicized (releasing him from observing the promises of the clerical life such as celibacy) but he will always be interiorly marked as a priest and will carry that priestly character in his interior soul.  Priesthood is more than what a person wears or what they do in their daily life; it is who they are in eternal life.

     As Jesus encourages us today, “Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  Our names are written in heaven on the day of baptism when we receive the marks of Christ.  Wear the stigmata on your soul proudly and joyfully until the day of our Lord.