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From: Colossians 1:12-20

Prayer for Advancement in Holiness;
Exhortation to Gratitude (Continuation)

[l2] Give thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the
inheritance of the saints in light. [13] He has delivered us from the
dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
[14] in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Hymn in Praise of Christ as Head of All Creation

[15] He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;
[16] for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible
and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or
authorities—all things were created through him and for him. [17] He is
before all things, and in him all things hold together. [18] He is the
head of the body, the church, he is the beginning; the first-born from the
dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. [19] For in him all the
fullness of God was pleased to dwell, [20] and through him to reconcile to
himself all things.

Commentary:

12-14. “The dominion of darkness”: the condition of enslavement to the
devil of a person in the state of sin. As is frequent in Sacred
Scripture (cf. Is 58:10; Jn 12:35; 1 Jn 1:5; 2:8; 2 Cor 6:14; Rom
13:11-14; Eph 5:7-13), the simile of movement from darkness to light is
used to refer to “redemption” or the change from a condition of sin to one
of righteousness and friendship with God, which is effected by infusion of
sanctifying grace (cf. St Thomas, “Commentary on Col, ad loc.”).

“Light”: this is a symbol of the risen Christ and also of the abundance
of graces which he won for mankind in his Easter Mystery. It also
describes the whole ensemble of supernatural benefits which grace brings
with it—goodness, righteousness (or holiness) and truth (cf. Eph 5:9),
which lead to the glory of heaven (cf. 2 Cor 4:6). Hence the “rite of
light”, so richly a symbol of supernatural realities, which has formed
part of baptismal liturgy since the first centuries.

The struggle between light and the power of darkness is referred to in
many passages of Sacred Scripture (cf. Jn 1:5, 9-11). Darkness means
both evil and the power of the Evil One. Before the redemption took
place, all men—as a consequence of original sin and their personal
sins—were slaves to sin; this slavery darkened their minds and made it
difficult for them to know God, who is the true light. Christ our Lord,
by carrying out the redemption and obtaining forgiveness for our sins
(cf. v. 14), rescued us from the kingdom of darkness from the tyranny of
the Evil One, and brought us into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of
truth and justice, of love and of peace (cf. “Preface for the Solemnity
of Christ the King”), enabling us to enjoy “the glorious freedom of the
children of God” (Rom 8:21).

“His beloved Son”: the Hebrew expression “Son of his love”, which is
paralleled in the Greek, is one of the ways Jesus Christ is referred to in
the New Testament (cf. Mt 12:6; Lk 20:13). A variation, “my Son, the
Beloved”, is spoken by the voice from heaven, that is, by the Father, at
Jesus’ baptism (cf. Mt 3:17; Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22) and at the Transfiguration
(cf. Mt 17:5; Mk 9:7; Lk 9:35).

By speaking in this way St Paul, like St John, is underlining the fact
that “God is love” (l Jn 4:8). God’s love for us was made manifest by
his sending his only Son into the world so that we might live through
him (cf. 1 Jn 4:9). By dying on the Cross he won life for us; by
redeeming us with his blood he obtained forgiveness for our sins (cf.
Col 1:14; Eph 2:4ff): “He revealed to us that God is love, and he gave
us the ‘new commandment’ of love (Jn 13:34), at the same time
communicating to us the certainty that the path of love is open for all
people, so that the effort to establish universal brotherhood is not a
vain one (cf. “Gaudium Et Spes”, 38). By conquering through his death on
the Cross evil and the power of sin, by his loving obedience he brought
salvation to all” (John Paul II, “Reconciliatio Et Paenitentia”, 10).

On the meaning of “redemption” and “forgiveness of sins”, see the note on
Eph 1:7-8.

12. We Christians should be grateful to God for his great mercy in
deigning to free us from the power of the devil, forgiving our sins and
making us worthy to “share in the inheritance of the saints”. We have
benefited in so many ways: “In addition to the gift itself, he also
gives us the power we need so receive it [...]. God has not only
honored us by making us share in the inheritance, but has made us worthy
to possess it. And so we receive a double honor from God—firstly, the
position itself; and secondly, the capacity to measure up to it”
(Chrysostom, “Hom. on Col, ad loc.”).

Our sharing in “the inheritance of the saints” enables us to draw on the
treasury of spiritual goods which the Church is continually applying to
its members—prayers, sacrifices and all kinds of meritorious actions,
which benefit every Christian. This “inheritance of the saints”—in
which we begin to share in this present life—will be found in its full
and permanent form by those who attain everlasting joy. The grace of
conversion originates in God’s loving kindness. “Prior to God’s gift of
grace, although not every man might be sinful there is nothing that he
does or can do which would merit forgiveness or the grace of God. You
must realize”, St John of Avila says, “that it is God who has brought
you out of darkness into his wonderful light [...]. And what caused
him to do so was not your past merits or any service you have rendered him,
but his kindness alone and the merits of our only mediator, Jesus
Christ our Lord” (”Audi, Filia”, 65).

15-20. Now we come to a very beautiful hymn in praise of Christ’s
sublime dignity as God and as man. This was a truth deserving emphasis
in view of the danger to the faith which the false apostles’ teaching
represented (cf. note on vv. 7-8). However, quite apart from the
particular situation in Colossae, the sublime teaching contained in
this canticle holds good for all times; it is one of the most important
Christological texts in St Paul’s writings.

The real protagonist of this passage is the Son of God made man, whose
two natures, divine and human, are always linked in the divine person
of the Word. However, at some points St Paul stresses his divinity (vv.
16, 17, 18b and 19) and at others his humanity (vv. 15, 18a, 18c and
20). The underlying theme of the hymn is Christ’s total pre-eminence
over all creation.

We can distinguish two stanzas in the hymn. In the first (vv. 15-17)
Christ’s dominion is stated to embrace the entire cosmos, stemming as
it does from his action as Creator: “in him all things were created”
(v. 16). This same statement is made in the prologue to the fourth
Gospel (cf. Jn 1:3), and it is implied in the Book of Genesis, which
tells us that creation was effected by God’s word (cf. Gen 1:3, 6, 9,
etc.). Since Christ is the Word of God, he is above all things, and
therefore St Paul stresses that all angels—irrespective of their
hierarchy or order—come under his sway.

Christ’s pre-eminence over natural creation is followed by his primacy
in the economy of supernatural salvation, a second creation worked by
God through grace. The second stanza (vv. 18-20) refers to this further
primacy of Christ: by his death on the cross, Christ has restored peace
and has reconciled all things—the world and mankind—to God. Jews and
Gentiles both are called to form part of one body, the Church, of which
Christ is the head; and all the celestial powers are subject to his
authority.

This passage is, then, a sublime canticle celebrating Christ, the head
by virtue of his surpassing excellence and his salvific action. “The
Son of God and of the Blessed Virgin”, Pius XII teaches, “must be
called the head of the Church for the special reason of his
preeminence. For the head holds the highest place. But none holds a
higher place than Christ as God for he is the Word of the Eternal
Father and is therefore justly called ‘the first-born of all creation’.
None holds a higher place than Christ as man, for he, born of the
immaculate Virgin, is the true and natural Son of God, and by reason of
his miraculous and glorious resurrection by which he triumphed over
death he is ‘the first-born from the dead’. And none stands higher than
he who, being the ‘one mediator between God and man’ (1 Tim 2:5),
admirably unites earth with heaven; who, exalted on the Cross as on his
throne of mercy, has drawn all things to himself” (”Mystici Corporis”,
15).

15. By the unaided use of reason man can work out that God exists, but
he could never, on his own, have grasped the essence of God: in this
sense God is said to be invisible (cf. St Thomas, “Commentary on Col,
ad loc.”). This is why it is said in St John’s Gospel that “no one has
ever seen God” (Jn 1:18).

In Sacred Scripture we are told that man was created “in the image of
God” (Gen 1:26). However, only the second person of the Blessed
Trinity, the Son, is the perfect image and likeness of the Father. “The
image [likeness] of a thing may be found in something else in two ways;
in one way it is found in something of the same specific nature—as the
image of the king is found in his son; in another way it is found in
something of a different nature, as the king’s image on the coin. In
the first sense the Son is the image of the Father; in the second sense
man is called the image of God; and therefore in order to express the
imperfect character of the divine image in man, man is not simply
called ‘the image’ but is referred to as being ‘according to the
image’, whereby is expressed a certain movement or tendency to
perfection. But it cannot be said that the Son of God is ‘according to
the image’, because he is the perfect image of the Father” (”Summa
Theologiae”, I, q. 35, a. 2 ad 3). And so, “for something to be truly
an image, it has to proceed from another as similar to it in species,
or at least in some aspect of the species” (”Summa Theologiae”, I, q.
35, a. 1, c.) To say that the Son is “image of the invisible God” means
that the Father and the Son are one-in-substance—that is, both possess
the same divine nature—, with the nuance that the Son proceeds from
the Father. It also conveys the fact that they are two distinct
persons, for no one is the image of himself.

The supreme revelation of God is that effected by the Son of God
through his Incarnation. He is the only one who can say, “He who has
seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). His sacred humanity, therefore,
reflects the perfections of God, which he possesses by virtue of the
hypostatic union—the union of divine nature and human nature which
occurs in his person, which is divine. The second Person of the
Trinity restored man to his original dignity. The image of God,
imperfect though it be, which there is in every man and woman, was
blurred by Adam’s sin; but it was restored in Christ: God’s true
self-image takes on a nature the same as ours, and thanks to the
redemption wrought by his death, we obtain forgiveness of sins (v. 14).

Jesus Christ is the “first-born of all creation” by virtue of the
hypostatic union. He is, of course, prior to all creation, for he
proceeds eternally from the Father by generation. This the Church has
always believed, and it proclaims it in the Creed: “born of the Father
before time began ..., begotten, not made, of one being
[consubstantial] with the Father” (”Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed”).

In Jewish culture, the first-born was first in honor and in law. When
the Apostle calls Jesus “the first-born of all creation”, he is
referring to the fact that Christ has pre-eminence and headship over
all created things, because not only does he pre-date them but they
were all created “through him” and “for him” (v. 16).

16-17. Jesus Christ is God; this is why he has pre-eminence over all
created things. The relationships between Christ and creation are
spelled out by three prepositions. “In him all things were created”: in
Christ: he is their source, their center and their model or exemplary
cause. “All things were created through him and for him”: through him,
in other words, God the Father, through God the Son, creates all
things; and for him, because he is the last end, the purpose or goal of
everything.

St Paul goes on to say that “in him all things hold together”; “the Son
of God has not only created everything: he conserves everything in
being; thus, if his sovereign will were to cease to operate for even an
instant, everything would return into the nothingness from which he
drew everything that exists” (Chrysostom, “Hom. on Col, ad loc.”).

All created things, then, continue in existence because they share,
albeit in a limited way, in Christ’s infinite fullness of existence or
perfection. His dominion extends not only over celestial things but
also over all material things, however insignificant they may seem: it
embraces everything in heaven and in the physical universe.

The sacred text also points to Christ’s supremacy over invisible
creation, that is, over the angels and celestial hierarchies (cf. Heb
1:5). If St Paul stresses this fact, it is to expose the errors of
those who were depicting Jesus as a creature intermediary between
corporeal beings and spiritual created beings, and, therefore, lower
than the angels.

18. “He is the head of the body, the church”: this image shows the
relationship of Christ with the Church, to which he sends his grace in
abundance, bearing life to all its members. ‘The head,” St Augustine
says, “is our very Savior, who suffered under Pontius Pilate and now,
after rising from the dead, is seated at the right hand of the Father.
And his body is the Church [...] For the whole Church, made up of the
assembly of the faithful—for all the faithful are Christ’s
members—has Christ, as its head, who rules his body from on high”
(”Enarrationes in Psalmos”, 56, 1).

St Paul unequivocally teaches that the Church is a body. “Now if the
Church is a body it must be something one and undivided, according to
the statement of St Paul: ‘We, though many, are one body in Christ’
(Rom 12:5). And not only must it be one and undivided, it must also be
something concrete and visible, as our Predecessor of happy memory, Leo
XIII, says in his Encyclical “Satis Cognitum”: ‘By the very fact of
being a body the Church is visible.’ It is therefore an aberration from
divine truth to represent the Church as something intangible and
invisible, as a mere ‘pneumatic’ entity joining together by an
invisible link a number of communities of Christians in spite of their
difference in faith.

“But a body requires a number of members so connected that they help
one another. And, in fact, as in our mortal organism when one member
suffers the others suffer with it, and the healthy members come to the
assistance of those who are ailing, so in the Church individual members
do not live only for themselves but also help one another, alleviating
their suffering and helping to build up the entire body” (Pius XII,
“Mystici Corporis”, 7).

“He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead”: this can be said
because he was the first man to rise from the dead, never again to die
(cf. 1 Cor 15:20; Rev 1:5), and also because thanks to him it enabled
men to experience resurrection in glory (cf. 1 Cor 15:22; Rom 8:11),
because they are justified through him (cf. Rom 4:25).

So, just as the previous verses looked to Christ’s pre-eminent role in
creations the hymn now focuses on his primacy in a new creation—the
rebirth of mankind, and all creation in its train, in the supernatural
order of grace and glory. Christ rose from the dead to enable us also
to walk in newness of life (cf. Rom 6:4). Therefore, in every way Jesus
Christ is “pre-eminent.”

19. The word “pleroma” translated here as “fullness”, has two meanings
in Greek: one, an active meaning, describes something that “fills” or
“completes”; for example, a ship’s full load can be referred to as its
“pleroma”. The other meaning is passive, “that which is filled” or “that
which is complete”, so that a ship can be said to be “pleroma” when it is
fully loaded. In this passage St Paul is using the word in both senses:
Christ is the fullness (passive sense) of the Godhead (cf. Col 2:9),
because he is full of all the perfections of the divine essence; and he
is the fullness (active sense), because he fills the Church and all
creation.

St John Chrysostom suggests that “the word ‘fullness’ is to be taken to
mean the divinity of Jesus Christ [...]. This term has been chosen the
better to show that the very essence of the godhead resides in Jesus
Christ” (”Hom. on Col, ad loc.”).

Since Christ possesses the divine nature, he also possesses the
fullness of the supernatural gifts, for himself and for all mankind.
Hence St Thomas’ comment that pleroma “reveals the dignity of the head
in so far as it has the fullness of all grace” (Commentary on Col, ad
loc.). In this sense, Christ is the fullness of the Church, for as its
head he vivifies his body with all kinds of unmerited gifts. Finally,
the entire created universe can be termed the “fullness” (”pleroma”) of
Christ, because everything that exists in heaven and on earth has been
created and is maintained in existence by him (cf. vv. 16-17); they are
ever-present to him and are ruled by him (cf. Is 6:3; Ps 139:8; Wis
1:7; etc.). Thus, the world, which was created good (cf. Gen 1:31)
tends towards its fulfillment insofar as it clearly reflects the imprint
God gave it at the start of creation.

20. Since Christ is pre-eminent over all creation, the Father chose to
reconcile all things to himself through him. Sin had cut man off from
God, rupturing the perfect order which originally reigned in the
created world. By shedding his blood on the cross, Christ obtained
peace for us; nothing in the universe falls outside the scope of his
peace-giving influence. He who in the beginning created all things in
heaven and on earth has reestablished peace throughout creation.

This reconciliation of all things, ushered in by Christ, is fostered by
the Holy Spirit who enables the Church to continue the process of
reconciliation. However, we will not attain the fullness of this
reconciliation until we reach heaven, when the entire created universe,
along with mankind, will be perfectly renewed in Christ (cf. “Lumen
Gentium”, 48).

“The history of salvation—the salvation of the whole of humanity, as
well as of every human being of whatever period—is the wonderful
history of a reconciliation; the reconciliation whereby God, as Father,
in the Blood and the Cross of his Son made man, reconciles the world to
himself and thus brings into being a new family of those who have been
reconciled.

“Reconciliation becomes necessary because there has been the break of
sin from which derive all the other forms of break within man and about
him. Reconciliation therefore, in order to be complete, necessarily
requires liberation from sin, which is to be rejected in its deepest
roots. Thus a close internal link unites “conversion” and
“reconciliation”. It is impossible to split these two realities or to
speak of one and say nothing of the other (John Paul II, “Reconciliatio
Et Paenitentia”, 13).

Jesus Christ also counts on the cooperation of every individual
Christian to apply his work of redemption and peace to all creation.
The founder of Opus Dei says, in this connection: “We must love the
world and work and all human things. For the world is good. Adam’s sin
destroyed the divine balance of creation; but God the Father sent his
only Son to reestablish peace, so that we his children by adoption,
might free creation from disorder and reconcile all things to God”
(”Christ Is Passing By”, 112).

Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.