A House Divided

Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Readings for Wednesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Reflection:

Today we begin with more of Paul’s distance learning program for the Church at Corinth. Notice he has moved away from his discourse on Wisdom and now focuses the problems facing the Church itself. Apparently there is some division among them because, while Paul and his entourage came and started the church, a person named Apollos carried the work forward and somehow there was a rift with part of the community claiming orthodoxy based upon Paul’s teachings (“I belong to Paul.”) and others supporting Apollos.

Paul points out in his letter that by behaving in this rather childish (but true to human nature) way they were not behaving as a community of faith but more like the un-converted community at large (“While there is jealousy and rivalry among you, are you not of the flesh, and walking according to the manner of man?”) Even in Paul’s time, there were forces of human nature doing their level best to divide the Church. Does this sound familiar?

If we were to bring the situation forward about a thousand years we see that same ugly head appear, this time in Constantinople in the 4th Crusade when members of the Roman Church despoiled the city and churches of the Eastern Church causing a rift that exists to this day. It exists in spite of numerous attempts on both sides to reconcile the differences. Some hurts, when allowed to go untreated for too long may never heal entirely.

Fast forward about six hundred years. We hear cries from within the ranks of the Church; “I am for Leo X.” and others, “I am for Luther”. This time there was not St. Paul to remind the community that they were behaving childishly and they should remember his teaching. Once more the Church was divided and, because of the reactions on both sides, no reconciliation was possible and that wound also exists today in the separation of the Lutheran denomination and all of the Bible based subdivisions that have occurred subsequent to that initial schism.

Less that one hundred years later the most recent of the divisions of the Church occurred when King Henry VIII of England could not win the Church’s blessing for a divorce broke away from the Church of Rome and established the Church of England, the Anglican Church also exists to this day as a separate band of Christians looking to the same head.

Looking back at the history of these schismatic times, what lesson is there for us today? How do we approach the whole idea of Christian unity when so many different ideologies have evolved and there are so many varying interpretations of the will of God in Christ? The Roman Catholic Church has long maintained that based upon Apostolic Succession and the Teaching Magesterium handed down through it that ours is the authentic path to salvation and that while many of our spawned brothers and sisters, separated dogmatically from us for good reasons or bad, need to follow our lead.

The problem is once more, as it was in the time of Paul, a human one. There are so many people in positions of authority who would rather be in those difficult but prestigious seats than seemingly caving in to the Roman Church and somehow reconciling years of rejection of Papal primacy with a call to unity. I believe the path must continue to be walked. As a friend of mine likes to point out – we are all sailing to the same destination. Some of us are on the “Big boat” and some are on small boats following as best they can. We pray for those who travel with us that the truth of Paul’s words come to them and they come at last to know; “… we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

Pax