Wednesday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 7:25-31
Today’s reading comes from a longer passage in which Paul deals with various questions about marriage and celibacy which had been put to him by the Christians of Corinth.
In the full passage (the whole of chapter 7), Paul makes three main points:
- In general, people should remain in the state of life they were in when they became Christians;
- Celibacy is a higher call than marriage and spiritually more rewarding;
- Marriage is acceptable for those who ‘cannot’ otherwise observe chastity.
In today’s reading, Paul is speaking to “the unmarried and widows” and answering a question about the desirability of a Christian’s remaining celibate. In giving his reply, he makes it perfectly clear that here he is expressing his own personal opinion, and not giving Jesus’ or the Church’s teaching on the matter. He is not dealing with a matter of moral right or wrong. Even so, he believes he is writing under divine inspiration and that what he advises is the better course of action. Moreover, he speaks from the experience of one who is himself, with God’s help, faithfully observing a celibate life.
His general advice is first that, under the pressures of an immoral and hostile environment in which the Christians for the most part find themselves, people should remain in the state they are in now. His advice is to be understood as applying to the particular circumstances in which the Corinthians are at present living and is not to be understood as having a general application. So, men who are married should remain married; on the other hand, those who are not yet married should consider remaining single.
However, if a young man or woman does decide to get married, there is no wrong in that. At the same time, Paul warns them that he foresees trouble in their married life. This is not a reflection on the characters of those who got married, but a warning that a faithful married life might be difficult in the pagan and immoral environment in which they lived, and where they were liable to suffer persecution for their faith. Moreover, in times of persecution, it could be difficult for a couple to take care of each other or even to remain together.
It is not clear whether Paul himself was ever married, and it is possible his present celibate situation might have been due to a marriage which he found incompatible with his vocation as a wandering apostle. (It is more likely that he was married at some stage; celibacy was not an admired state among Jews and we need to remember, too, that Paul had been a Pharisee, setting an example for other Jews.)
“Time has grown short,” says Paul. This may be a reference to the second coming of the Lord, or it may be just a general statement that there is not much time in which to do the Lord’s work, especially if there is a threat of persecution. (The early Christians found themselves constantly harassed by both Jews and Gentiles.) Attention should rather be focused on living the Christian life, on the love and service of the Lord, and the needs of the Christian community in its work of giving witness to the gospel.
Everything else the Christians did should be subordinated to this primary concern of their Christian life.
So, putting it rather strongly, Paul urges
- the married to live as if they were not married,
- those who are grieving as if they were not grieving,
- those who are enjoying life to remember that it may not last,
- those who are tied up in acquiring ownership of things to realise that nothing really belongs to anyone,
- and those who have to deal with the world around them not to get too caught up in it.
It is a warning of the transitoriness of life. Paul reminds the Corinthians:
For the present form of this world is passing away.
In other words, we should not cling too tightly or give too much of our energies to relationships, activities and things which sooner or later we will have to let go of. They must never become ends in themselves.
Very generally speaking, Paul’s advice is still sound. People are still called both to celibacy and to marriage. Marriage responds to a need that most people have; nature, in its concern for the preservation of the species, has seen to that. Celibacy, for the majority, is not what they feel called to. Yet, apart altogether from those who adopt it for religious reasons, there are many who choose to remain celibate.
The Church—together with other religions—has seen the call to celibacy as allowing a more complete commitment to the direct service of God. In that sense, it is a ‘better’ or ‘higher’ calling in itself. It also indicates that it is possible to live a full and enriched life without being sexually active. This is less a matter of supreme sacrifice than an expression of a special freedom.
But that does not at all mean that the celibate is necessarily a ‘holier’ or better person than those who are married. Both are vocations and through both the gospel can be lived to the full. Both bring their rewards and both at times require great sacrifices to be made.
The question is not which is better in itself, but to which way God is calling me to love and serve him.
Paul’s own life, and the witness of many religious priests, brothers and sisters as well as of many others who choose de facto celibacy makes it clear that celibacy offers a level of freedom for greater service to a larger number. As Thomas Merton put it, celibacy enables: “Belonging to all because belonging to none.”
But it cannot be overemphasised that the married couple also makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to both society and the Christian community through the family life it nurtures and its contribution to the future of our society. Let us ask God today that each one of us be faithful to the particular way in which he has called us to serve him.
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Wednesday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:20-26
Today we begin what is known as Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’, which more or less parallels Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Luke’s is much shorter, but both begin with the Beatitudes and end with the parable of the house builders. Some of what is found in Matthew’s Sermon is found elsewhere in Luke, because Matthew’s Sermon consists of disparate sayings of Jesus gathered into one place. Luke also omits Matthew’s specifically Jewish material which would not have been relevant to his gentile readers.
Luke’s Sermon can be summarised as follows:
- An introduction of blessings and woes (vv 20-26)
- The love of one’s enemies (vv 27-36)
- The demands of loving one’s neighbour (vv 37-42)
- Good deeds as proof of one’s goodness (vv 43-45)
- A parable on listening to and acting on the words of Jesus (vv 46-49)
Similar to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s Sermon on the Plain begins with his version of the Beatitudes. But there are striking differences. Whereas Matthew has eight (some would say seven) Beatitudes, Luke has four “Blesseds” and four contrasting “Woes”. As is typical of his uncompromising style when it comes to following Jesus, the language of Luke is much more direct and hard-hitting, and it may well be closer to what Jesus actually said.
Matthew’s Beatitudes propose a set of attitudes which reflect the spirit of the Kingdom—qualities to be found in the truly Christian and human life. Luke, on the other hand, speaks of material conditions in this life which will be overturned. Later in this Gospel, this is illustrated graphically in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-30).
Luke also has Jesus speaking in the second person: “Blessed are you” and “Woe to you“, rather than in the third person as Matthew does (“Blessed are those who…”). Nor does he speak of the “poor in spirit”, but of “you who are poor”, and he certainly means the materially poor.
He goes on to say how blessed too are:
…you who are hungry…you who weep…you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
Undoubtedly Matthew’s Beatitudes can be read to consider just spiritual poverty and a hunger for righteousness, which in fact are also a form of real poverty and real hunger. In contrast, Luke’s is a Gospel for the materially poor and distressed, and we must be careful not to turn our focus away from them. That is why he has Jesus being born in poverty and dying naked and destitute (of even his ‘friends’).
Jesus tells those who are poor and hungry and abused to:
Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
And this is the way Jesus the Prophet will also be treated.
In a first read, it seems like a classical example of religion as the ‘opium of the people’: Be happy that you are having such a hard time now because there is a wonderful future waiting for you in the next world (as was mockingly described by the atheist Karl Marx).
The second part is not likely to go down well in our contemporary developed world:
- But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
- Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
- Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
- Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
How are we to understand these sayings which turn our common worldview upside down? They have to be seen in the light of the Kingdom, in the kind of society that Jesus came to set up, a society based on mutual love and sharing and support. This is a Kingdom for this world and not just the next. The coming of such a society could only be good news for the poor and destitute (material and otherwise), for those suffering from hunger (physical and otherwise), for those depressed by deep sorrow and for those abused and rejected for their commitment to Jesus and his Way.
On the other hand, it would not be good news for those self-focused people who amass material wealth at the expense of others, who indulge in excessive consumption of the world’s goods, who live lives centred on personal hedonism and pleasure, and who feed off the envy and adulation of those around them. They are really not part of that Kingdom. To enter fully into the Kingdom, they have to unload all these concerns and obsessions and let go. Instead of focusing on what they can get, they will have to focus on what they can share of what they have.
A clear example is the rich young man in the Gospel. How rich he was—and yet how sad he was! Compare him with Zacchaeus, whom we will be meeting later on.
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