Philemon 1:12
Whom I have sent back to thee. And do thou receive him as my own bowels.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- quem remisi tibi. Tu autem illum, ut mea viscera, suscipe :
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ὃν ἀνέπεμψά σοι αὐτόν, τοῦτʼ ἔστιν τὰ ἐμὰ σπλάγχνα·
Haydock's commentary
On verses 12 to 15
Do thou receive him as my own bowels. That is, as myself. Perhaps by the permission of God's providence (who never permits evil, but for some greater good) he departed from thee for a little while,6 that thou mightest receive him for ever, being now after his conversion in a way of being made partaker with thee of the same eternal happiness. (Witham)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom An Exhortation to Theodore After His Fall, Letter I
18. Moreover also the blessed Paul not only welcomes Onesimus the unprofitable runaway thief, because he was converted, but also asks his master to treat him who had repented, on equal terms of honour with his teacher, thus saying: “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds, who was aforetime unprofitable to thee, but now is profitable to thee and to me, whom I have sent back to thee; thou therefore receive him, that is my very heart, whom I would fain have kept with me, that in thy behalf he might minister unto me in the bonds of the Gospel; but without thy mind I would do nothing that thy goodness should not be as of necessity, but of free will. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Titus 1:1-4
“To Titus mine own son,” that is, my true son. For it is possible for men not to be true sons, as he of whom he says, “If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, with such an one no not to eat.” ( 1 Cor. v. 11 .) Here is a son, but not a true son. A son indeed he is, because he has once received the grace, and has been regenerated: but he is not a true son, because he is unworthy of his Father, and a deserter to the usurped sovereignty of another. For in children by nature, the true and the spurious are determined by the father that begot, and the mother who bore them. But it is not so in this case, but it depends on the disposition. For one who was a true son may become spurious, and a spurious son may become a true one. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Philemon 1:4-6
Ver. 12 . “Whom I have sent again to thee.” By this also he has quenched his anger, by delivering him up. For masters are then most enraged, when they are entreated for the absent, so that by this very act he mollified him the more.
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Philemon 1:4-6
Ver. 12 . “Thou therefore receive him, that is mine own bowels.”
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius
1. Those whom mutual affection has joined together, a written page ought not to sunder. I must not, therefore, distribute my words some to one and some to another. For so strong is the love that binds you together that affection unites all three of you in a bond no less close than that which naturally connects two of your number. Indeed, if the conditions of writing would only admit of it, I should amalgamate your names and express them under a single symbol. The very letter which I have received from you challenges me in each of you to see all three, and in all three to recognize each. When the reverend Evagrius transmitted it to me in the corner of the desert which stretches between the Syrians and the Saracens, my joy was intense. It wholly surpassed the rejoicings felt at Rome when the defeat of Cannæ was retrieved, and Marcellus at Nola cut to pieces the forces of Hannibal. …