Saturday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 3, 2022

1 Corinthians 4, 6-15

Brothers and sisters: Learn from myself and Apollos not to go beyond what is written, so that none of you will be inflated with pride in favor of one person over against another. Who confers distinction upon you? What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it? You are already satisfied; you have already grown rich; you have become kings without us! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we also might become kings with you. For as I see it, God has exhibited us Apostles as the last of all, like people sentenced to death, since we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and men alike. We are fools on Christ’s account, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clad and roughly treated, we wander about homeless and we toil, working with our own hands. When ridiculed, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we respond gently. We have become like the world’s rubbish, the scum of all, to this very moment.  I am writing you this not to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

The context of this section of St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians is Paul’s statement, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4, 1), asserting that he and the other Apostles had come to them not as leaders of sects but as servants of Christ.  Likewise, he teaches the Corinthians that they, then, are servants too.  In counseling them “not to go beyond what is written”, Paul refers to what he has written to them earlier in the Letter about their tendency to uphold a particular Apostle as a sort of cult figure, and to boast of their connection with him.  Paul follows this by challenging them: “What do you possess that you have not received?”  We would do well in meditating long and often on this.  All that we have that is good comes from God.  He gives it to us a gift for us to use for his greater glory.  If we try to use it for our own glory, we will lose it.  The main thing we can have besides the gift of life is the gift of faith.  Like our life, our faith is an incomparable gift.  Not many have it, and many that do have it lose it.  Without faith, though, life has no meaning, no direction.  We must have both life and faith to be happy.  They form the necessary foundation for human happiness.  Paul’s challenge to the Corinthians must have made them go silent in their contentions because each of them could easily recall how not that long before they had lived without faith.  We should try to imagine the emptiness of life should we suffer the grave misfortune of losing our faith through neglecting to nourish it with prayer.

“But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it? You are already satisfied; you have already grown rich; you have become kings without us!”  Paul speaks ironically here, gently mocking the Corinthians for their believing that once saved, they are always saved, to borrow a saying of the Protestants.  “I wish that you had become kings, so that we also might become kings with you.”  That is, Paul wishes that they indeed were already saved so that he might be saved too.  “For as I see it, God has exhibited us Apostles as the last of all, like people sentenced to death, since we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and men alike.”  To further make his point about the need the Corinthians had for humility, he speaks of himself and of the other Apostles as spectacles in the arena, sentenced to death.  They are fools, weak, disrespected, hungry, thirsty, poorly clad, roughly treated, homeless.  Though hearing the Gospel of Christ and his words of eternal life, they have become “like the world’s rubbish” and “the scum of all”.  Spectacles, certainly, to the angels who know full well the great good they are doing for the sake of Jesus.  Spectacles to men who will only on the Last Day know that they suffer all of this for no financial or other worldly gain.

“I am writing you this not to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children.”  Now Paul finishes with the irony and assures the Corinthians of their place in his heart.  The Reading closes on an intimate note: “Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.”  Paul refers to Apostles like Peter and missionaries like Apollos who have passed through and strengthened their faith with their preaching while reminding them that they first came to know Christ and to believe in him through his own efforts.  He feels very much their father and has endured much pain and deprivation on their account.

In today’s Gospel Reading (Luke 6, 1-5), the Pharisees acts as if they had created the Sabbath and that they alone were its guardians.  The Lord teaches them that they are not, and that he himself is “the Lord of the Sabbath”: he has created it and he defines it for us.  How confused we become when we start thinking everything belongs to us.