"I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." | Catholic Daily No. 24

A Word from St. Paul · Philippians 3:12–14 · 13th Week in Ordinary Time

There is a sentence of St. Paul's that a great many people keep close for a lifetime — and it is one of mine:

"I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me."* — Philippians 3:12

He is not writing it from a mountaintop. He writes it from prison, near the end of his life, a man who by any human measure had already done more for the Gospel than anyone alive. And what he says is: I have not arrived. "Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect," he begins — "but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus" (Douay). Then the line that has moved so many: "forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus."

Notice the turn in it, because everything hangs there. Paul does not press on to earn Christ. He presses on because Christ already took hold of him first — on the Damascus road, unasked, while Paul was still an enemy. The running is not a bid to be loved. It is the response of a man who has already been seized by Love and now spends everything to lay hold of the One who laid hold of him. The effort is total; the initiative was never his.

Aquinas, commenting on this very passage, puts the whole of the spiritual life inside a single distinction. Paul says he apprehends — he has laid hold — but not that he comprehends. For St. Thomas the difference is everything: to comprehend is to possess a thing fully and completely, and no one comprehends God on this side of heaven. On the road — in via — we lay hold, we run, we grasp truly but partially. Full possession — in patria, the homeland — is the prize itself. So the Christian is by definition a runner: really holding Christ, never yet done holding Him.

And this is why "forgetting what is behind" is not sentiment but strategy. Aquinas is blunt about it: on the road of virtue, the good already achieved is not a place to sit down. To stop advancing is already to begin sliding back. The past gains — even the real ones, even the holy ones — are set down deliberately, so they cannot become a cushion. The runner who looks back at the ground he has covered slows down. Paul refuses to look back.

The prize Paul names — the Latin is bravium, the award handed to the winner of the race — Aquinas identifies as the "supernal vocation," the upward call: eternal beatitude, God Himself. And there is a quiet engine under all of it that Thomas states elsewhere: in this life, charity has no fixed ceiling (Summa II-II, Q.24, A.7). Love of God can always increase; there is no point at which a soul may say enough, I have grown as much as I can. That is the theological reason a person can press on for a whole lifetime and never run out of road. There is always more of Christ to lay hold of.

"I was no prophet, nor have I belonged to a company of prophets; I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. The LORD took me from following the flock, and said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel." — Amos 7:14–15

→ The Mass gives us another man who was taken hold of. Amaziah the priest tells Amos to stop preaching and go home; Amos answers that he never chose this — God reached into an ordinary working life and seized him for a task he did not ask for. It is the Damascus road in the Old Testament. And the Gospel completes the picture: in Matthew 9:1–8 Christ heals the paralytic with "Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home" — the man who could not move is told to get up and walk. The whole liturgy this morning is about being laid hold of by God and then rising to move. Take up your mat, and press on.

We honored Paul with Peter on Monday, at the head of the week. It is worth returning to him for this one sentence, because it is the sentence of a finisher. Near the end he could write, "I have competed well, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7) — the same runner's image, now at the tape. The man who wrote press on actually did, to the block in Rome. He is the patron of everyone who has been grasped by something larger than themselves and decided to spend the rest of their life laying hold of it.

The single hardest discipline in this work is the exact one Paul names: forgetting the things that are behind.

The last winning trade breeds complacency — you start to feel you have the touch, and you loosen. The last losing trade breeds the opposite — fear, or worse, the urge to make it back, to get even with the market. Both are the same error: they are the things behind, and they reach forward to corrupt the next decision. A disciplined system is built precisely to forget them. Every position is judged fresh on its own merits — the setup in front of it, not the P&L behind it. Yesterday's gain earns no extra confidence; yesterday's loss earns no revenge. The book does not remember its moods.

And then the second half of Paul's line: press towards the mark. Aquinas' "no standing still" is the whole posture — you do not rest in a record, however good. The commitment here has always been stated that way: we do not stop until the goal is reached, and reaching it is not a reason to stop growing. There is always a tighter rule, a cleaner exit, a better-formed base to wait for. The prize is ahead, never behind.

The leaders keep climbing; not one has yet formed a clean base. Cash is the position — and cash held without restlessness is itself a way of not looking back.

We wait, and we do not grasp at what has not cleared. Pressing on and forcing a trade are not the same thing — Paul strained forward toward the mark, not toward every movement in front of him.

Paul had done more than almost anyone, and still said I have not arrived — and pressed on, forgetting what was behind.

What past success or past failure are you still carrying that is quietly slowing you down — and what would it look like to set it down and run?

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