Perhaps the duties laid upon him did not give him time to think about this. Flight shook him, but at the same time gave him freedom to consider his state and to seek a refuge for the peace of his spirit. He found it where all the burdened and laboring find it, in the Lord and Savior. In Him you yourself have found everything that satisfies and gives rest to your soul.
You surely regard belonging to the Lord as the first good, and you desire all to obtain it. Your slave, while living with you, did not obtain this good. For whatever reason, he did not obtain it. But as soon as he fled from you, he obtained it at once.
Therefore do not look on this flight as a crime. Do not say, “Onesimus ran away.” Say only that he was separated from you, so that he might seize that good which you desire everyone to seize, and which, for some reason, he did not happen to seize while with you.
Judge that this is so from the fact that, as soon as he seized this good, he immediately returns to you. Neither I nor he see anything that hinders this return, whether in him, in you, or in the surrounding circumstances. Is it not evident that he was separated from you only in order to become a Christian? He became a Christian and hastens back to you. It is as though he is fulfilling a commission given to him.
Whose commission? You did not give it. But do not puzzle over this. Recognize in it the providential ordering of God, and that will be enough for you. Thus God judged it good to save your slave. Believe this, and receive your slave as one overshadowed by God’s providential good pleasure.
Add also this reflection. He was a slave, but he returns to you as a brother in the Lord. Slavery is a temporary and accidental relation between you. Brotherhood in the Lord is an eternal bond between you, a living and indissoluble bond. As long as you both are in the Lord, nothing, neither in time nor in eternity, can separate you from one another.
Thus it came about that he was separated from you for an hour, so that he might be inseparable from you forever. You can judge that he is such in his disposition from the fact that he returns to you himself, unbound. It remains for you to receive him in the same spirit. Receive him as one who is to remain inseparably with you forever.
Saint Chrysostom and all our interpreters see God’s providential ordering in this circumstance. Saint Chrysostom says: “He said well, ‘perhaps,’ so that the master might yield and give up the thought that Onesimus fled with evil intent. He suggests: enough; was it really so? Perhaps it happened otherwise. He awakens in him doubt about the correctness of his thought concerning the slave’s flight” (Oecumenius, Theophylact).
“He did not say, ‘for this reason he fled,’ but ‘for this reason he was separated,’ so that by a more harmonious expression he might more quickly incline the master to mercy. Likewise he did not say, ‘he separated himself,’ but ‘he was separated,’ that is, this separation was not his own arrangement. Thus Joseph, justifying his brothers, said, ‘God sent me here’ (Gen 45:5). That is, He turned their evil intention to good.
“‘For this reason,’ he says, ‘he was separated for an hour.’ He shortens the time, confesses the sin, and turns everything into divine economy, that is, God’s ordering. ‘That thou mightest receive him forever,’ not only in the present time, but also in the future, so that thou mayest have him always. He will no longer run away.”
THEOSIS