23rd Week, Tuesday, Sept 10
1 Cor 6:1-11 / Luke 6:12-19
Paul speaks about disputes: Settle your disputes among yourselves.
During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, French and German soldiers were
facing each other in opposite trenches on Christmas Eve. Suddenly a young
French soldier began to sing the Christmas hymn "O Holy Night." He
stood on top of the mound of dirt in front of the trench, facing the Germans.
Not a shot was fired throughout the song. When the French soldier finished, a
German soldier climbed out of his trench and began singing the Christmas hymn
"From Heaven to Earth Come."A That story makes us ask why Christians
and Christian nations have to resort to wars to settle disputes. Why can't they
settle their disputes peacefully, among themselves, as Paul recommends in
today's reading?
***
How do we settle disputes with others? "Happy are those who work
for peace; God will call them his children!" Matthew
***
The community of Corinth has problems not only of unity but, as an
important pagan port city, it is also easy-going on morality. Paul reminds them
that this is intolerable in Christians. They are now identified with Christ and
should have become new.
It is strange how, as we read in the gospel, faithful, practicing
religious people, like the scribes and Pharisees – the regular churchgoers of
their day – were a big obstacle to the work of Jesus. They are upset and angry
because Jesus cures a man with a withered hand on the day of the Lord. Jesus
came to do good and to preserve life, as he said, to carry out a mission of
love and life, and these cannot be adequately expressed in laws and commands.
We may and should do good also on Sundays!
***
When Love Trumps Law
In August 2020, a Sunday
edition of the Spanish newspaper El País carried a two-page
story on how, between 1940-1944 in the Nazi-occupied France, four
Claretian missionaries in a Spanish mission in Paris forged baptismal and
matrimonial documents to help 155 Jews in France to pass off as Catholics in
order to escape being caught and deported to concentration camps by the Nazis. Had
the missionaries been caught doing so then, they would have endangered not only
their own lives, but also the French-Spanish diplomatic relations, and probably
triggered Nazi reactions against the Vatican as well as Catholics (as the Nazis
did to the Dutch Church). They violated the Church laws as well. But they did
so at the behest of the Gospel. Tony de Mello once observed: “Obedience keeps
the rules; love knows when to break them.” Jesus would agree.
***
Any institution, whether secular or religious, has a set of foundational
principles upon which it builds its purpose and vision. Yet these principles at
their very essence are not lofty ideologies but rather fundamental principles
of life like equality, justice, respect, dignity and unity. And these are
actually very basic human values that will give the organization a human face and
a human heart. Yet we heard in the 1st reading that in the church of Corinth,
there were complaints against one another within the community resulting in a
court case that was presided over by unbelievers.
Besides being a shame and a humiliation in public, it was obvious that the essence of the Christian community was corroded and tattered. St. Paul pointed it out bluntly when he said that they themselves were doing the wrong and the cheating to each other. The Christian community had become a laughing stock to unbelievers.
But just like in every chain there is a weak link and in every armour
there is a chink, there will be some bad sheep in the Christian community. Even
when Jesus chose His apostles, among them was one who will become a traitor. Hence,
we who are Christians need to be renewed in our spirituality and to be
convicted of the essence and mission of the Church.
We must always focus on Jesus and continue His mission of preaching
repentance and healing and forgiveness and deliverance. We must pray to be
delivered from the evil and sin within us, so that we can be a sign of
salvation to the world.
***
Prayer
God our Father, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ. He went around doing good and no law made by human beings could keep him from carrying out his mission of life and love. Let your Spirit enlighten us to understand his mentality and to give first place to what is important, that we may live by the law of love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
