The Bench at Alice's Restaurant

Tuesday of the Twenty third Week in Ordinary Time &
The Most Holy Name of Mary

Background on The Most Holy Name of Mary
Readings for Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 1 Cor 6:1-11, Responsorial Psalm Ps 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and 9b, Gospel Lk 6:12-19

Reflection:

St. Paul continues to put flesh on his vision of the living Body of Christ which is the Church. Today he tells the Corinthians something in a subtle way that the Lord said more dramatically. It comes down to the great paradox of discipleship, “Be in the world but separate from the world.” In this case Paul is telling the community at Corinth that they need to settle disputes that occur in the community themselves and not refer their complaints to the civil courts.

I actually feel a little sorry for the Corinthian Christians. They must have been good people or else why would they have signed up for the difficult road that is Christianity in the first place. They did not have an active community model to be a part of, so they had to find their own way based on what Paul left with them after he got things rolling. They live in a secular community that has a reputation of being very unsavory. Paul even says that some of them have past lives that are less than moral icons;

Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy
prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor
slanderers nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God. That is what some of you
used to be;

Imagine trying to pull together a “God fearing” Christian community amid a secular community where the debauched and amoral sins in the above litany are present? Wait a second; all those things are fairly rampant in our secular community today. Yes, we can defiantly identify with those ancient forerunners of our modern Church. The big difference is supposed to be that we have a codified body of teaching and examples that guide us.

When we think about this situation that Paul addresses, we see more similarities to our own situation. While Paul was addressing a mixed community of Christians (that is there were Greeks and Jews who had converted to Christianity), they did have the books of the Law and Prophets (Torah and Talmud) that provided them with guidance familiar to Paul. It is just that Christ changed the way God’s Law was understood in the Old Testament.

The lesson we can take away from Paul today comes at two levels. First, at the very literal level, we should attempt to work out differences we encounter with members of our intimate faith community (this would be, at minimum, our families and could go larger if we are lucky enough to be close to a larger number of close friends who share our faith). It seems that many of the litigious blow ups we here about are family centered. It is just easier to go from intense love to intense hate in the family. And that hurt/hate, self-destructive as it is, is often a weapon hurled in the courtroom. As Christians, we need to rise above that and find our justice in the Lord.

The second level lesson Paul gives us is his vision of Christian community. It is a vision we can and should apply to our own parish community. It is a vision of common love, common compassion, common support and, above all, common worship of the one who gives us his own example, Jesus. In our large communities with instant access to our immediate family even when they live around the world, this is increasingly difficult. But it is a vision we must apply in spite of all the challenges we face. One thing is sure, if we don’t try, it definitely won’t happen.

Pax