First Letter to the Corinthians
Mystical Word 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time – January 19
Enjoy an introduction to St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.
For the next few weeks, the second reading at Sunday Eucharist will come from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. We only get snippets read during Mass, which might tantalize or, likely more often, confuse us. But these small morsels are a part of a larger whole that has a very powerful, indeed transformative, message. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul “proclaims Christ Crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23). It is the way celebrated in the justly famous chapter on love.
Biblical scholar Maria Pascuzzi writes, “the community at Corinth was characterized by rivalry…obsession with status and superior wisdom leading to arrogance…disregard for the less spiritually enlightened and gifted…as well as for the economic have-nots…sexual immorality…assertiveness with regard to individual rights.” These were baptized Christians who had not fully exorcised the demons of their culture. Just being baptized and gathering for worship did not automatically create a people transformed to live as Jesus lived. “Paul had to deal with this reality, and in his correspondence he commands, exhorts, persuades, threatens, does everything possible to refocus the community on the gospel and bring about transformed gospel living” (Pascuzzi).
Corinth was a strategically important and economically flourishing Roman city. It was the capital of Roman-controlled Greece. The city enjoyed a reputation as a pluralistic, culturally sophisticated, and cosmopolitan city where many diverse ideas and peoples mingled. “The Corinthians were known to be fiercely competitive, driven by the desire for status, wealth, honor, and power” (Pascuzzi). They were socio-economic climbers. They wanted to climb the ladder of success. This was their problem.
St. Paul had to deal with this mentality of upward mobility because it directly contradicted the Gospel’s call to let go, be in solidarity with the poor, and be humble. The Corinthians' pursuit of wealth and privilege blinded them to the way of love. The root cause of this desire for success is believing in the lie of separation. St Paul exhorts the community to put away divisions. They think they are separate from one another and from God, hence, I need to take care of myself and my family but not you and yours. They way to dispel the illusion of separateness and realize not only that the Christian community is united but that they are one with God – St. Paul tells them (and us) that they are the temples of God who lives within them – by following the way of the cross.
St. Paul wrote his first letter to the Christians in Corinth while he was staying in Ephesus, likely around the year 55 AD. He must have been perplexed by their lack of appreciation for the most basic and most powerful message of the Christian faith: the message of the cross. He told them, “God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something” (1 Cor 1:28). The Corinthians wanted to be something great. Living the Gospel means letting the ego-self be reduced to nothing to enjoy unity with God and with all. The two ways are in direct opposition.
We either choose a path of ego-enhancement and self-aggrandizement or we choose the path of letting go of the ego and self-annihilation. Now, self-annihilation does not mean having low self-esteem or hating oneself; and it does not, at all, have anything to do with suicide. It is a way of describing the total and radical loss of self as the center of consciousness so that God-consciousness – St. Paul calls it the “mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) – may emerge from within. Pride or exaltation of self as distinct and separate and center leads to immoral, hurtful behaviors. For then we are acting out of the illusion and real pain of feeling separate. In other words, we are not in love. We are out of the common unity of all with God.
Here, the present reading from 1 Corinthians finds its proper place. St. Paul writes, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit…To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor 12:4, 7). Everyone contributes to the ongoing spiritual evolution and material care of the community. Everyone has a unique manifestation or gift of the Spirit. But we are all still one with the Holy Spirit. Personally, and as a community, God dwells within each and all.
St. Paul spends the majority of the letter applying the logic of the cross to specific situations arising in Corinth. But he ends by telling them to love, for love is the bond of unity. Love will reduce the self to nothing. Love is the most excellent way for it is simply the way we put the cross, letting go and being reduced to nothing, into practice in relationships. Love is the way to characterize the state of unity. If we are in love, we act with kindness and patience, not with rudeness and arrogance. That is how the Christians in Corinth as well as the Christians in Washington, DC will be held together, through love.
First Corinthians is a powerful testimony of the transformative nature of the cross. It can change our lives as much as it changed the lives of the Christians living in Corinth, perhaps even more. If you would like to learn more about St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, join us for a series of classes on 1 Corinthians starting January in the Great Hall from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. All are welcome.