Some fifty years ago, I spent a five-day retreat on a small island off the coast of Mystic, Connecticut. On each day of the retreat, I concentrated my meditation upon a chapter of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. It was one of the richest retreat experiences I’ve had: one that implanted in me the lasting conviction of the surpassing importance of this singular New Testament writing.
Scarcely any other passage in the New Testament offers so concise yet complete an expression of the substance of Christian faith as the Christological hymn found in the Letter’s first chapter (Col 1:15-20). It opens with its famous prelude: “He is the Image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,” rises to a crescendo: “in him all things hold together,” and culminates in a full-voiced proclamation of the world’s reconciliation: “making peace through the blood of his cross.”
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