Sunday

**Book of Corinthians with commentary from the Navarre Bible Commentary Sun-Fri**

1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are [a]sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4 I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, 5 that you were enriched in everything by Him in all [b]utterance and all knowledge, 6 even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed [c]in you, 7 so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer:   O Lord, lead me not into temptation.

O Lord, grant me good thoughts.  (Hourly prayers or St John Chrysostom)

Monday

Commentary: . To be a member of the Church of God, therefore, it is essential that a person believe that Christ is God. “We believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. He is the eternal Word of the Father before time began, one in substance with the Father, homoousios to Patri, through whom all things were made. He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and was made man. ‘Equal, therefore, to the Father according to his divinity, less than the Father according to his humanity, his unity deriving not from some impossible confusion of substance but from his Person” (Paul VI, Creed of the People of God, 11).

St Paul teaches the need to give thanks to God and he sets us an example in this regard. Obdurate sinners fail to acknowledge the benefits God gives them (cf. Rom 1:21), but Christians should always base their prayer on gratitude to God (cf. Phil 4:6). “

Prayer:  O Lord, grant me tears, and remembrance of death, and compunction.

O Lord, grant me the thought of confessing my sins.

Tuesday

1 Corinthians 1:10

10 Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all [d]speak the same thing, and that there be no [e]divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. 11 For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are [f]contentions among you. 12 Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name. 16 Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Besides, I do not know whether I baptized any other. 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.

Prayer: O Lord, grant me humility, chastity, and obedience.

O Lord, grant me patience, courage, and meekness.

 

Wednesday

Navarrre Commentary:

“The day of our Lord’: in St Paul’s writings and in the New Testament generally, this refers to the day of the General Judgment when Christ will appear as Judge, clothed in glory (cf. 2Cor 1:14; 1 Thess5:2). Christians actively hope that that Day will find them “blameless” (cf. Phil 1:10; 1 Thess 3:13; 5:23); the basis for this hope is God’s faithfulness—

His appeal is virtually a warning: “I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Apostle only calls on the name of our Lord when he has very serious counsel to offer (cf. 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6); he makes it clear that it is a very grave matter to put the unity of the Church at risk. Each of these groups in Corinth is appealing to whichever authority it prefers—without Paul, Apollos or Cephas having any say in the matter. Christ cannot be divided and therefore neither can the Church, Christ’s body

 

Prayer:  O Lord, implant in me the root of good, Thy fear in my heart.

O Lord, vouchsafe me to love Thee with all my soul and thoughts, and in all things to do Thy will.

Thursday
Navarrre Commentary:

Although St Paul does not go into much detail, we can see that a number of groupings had grown up among the Corinthians. They each claimed to follow a prominent Christian (clearly without any encouragement from their “heroes”), and a certain rivalry had developed which could easily undermine the unity of faith. The group who claimed Apollos—a Jewish convert from Alexandria (Egypt), a man of eloquence, well versed in the Scriptures (cf. Acts 18:24-28)—would have emerged after Apollos spent some time preaching in Corinth shortly after Paul left there (cf. Acts 19:1).

“I belong to Cephas”: the Peter group may have consisted of people who knew him to be the leader of the Apostles (cf. 3:21-23; 9:4-5; 15:5); St Peter may have passed through Corinth at some point, but there is no evidence of a visit and it is more likely that some of his disciples or converts had come to the city.

“I belong to Christ”: this can be interpreted as a reference either to a fourth group very attached to certain preachers from Jerusalem, of a Judaizing tendency—and therefore very attached to Jewish traditions and very disinclined to acknowledge the newness of Christ’s message; or else to some Christians who were disgusted at the petty quarrelling of the other groups and, therefore, would naturally claim to belong to Christ and only to Christ. It is possible, however, that this is a personal statement of St Paul’s, designed to show how foolish these groups are: You may say that you belong to Paul, to Apollos or to Peter: but I belong to Christ.

 

Prayer: O Lord, protect me from evil men, and demons, and passions, and from every other unseemly thing.

O Lord, Thou knowest that Thou doest as Thou wilt: Thy will be done also in me a sinner; for blessed art Thou unto the ages. Amen.

 

Friday

There is no excuse for divisions, the Apostle tells them: unity is not dependent on which teacher you had or who baptized you; it is something based on Christ—whom all the preachers preach; Christ was the one who was crucified for everyone, and his is the name they were baptized in. And there is only one Christ; therefore, they all belong to him.

It is through Baptism, the door of the Christian life, that a Christian becomes part of the one body of Christ; there the merits gained by Christ on the cross are applied to him, and the baptized person is configured to his dead and risen Lord: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4).

“When we read that an entire family was baptized by Paul (cf. 1 Cor 1:16), it is sufficiently obvious that the children of the family must also have been cleansed in the saving font” (St Pius V Catechism, II, 2, 32). The practice of baptizing small children is a tradition received from the Apostles; “Three passages of the Acts of the Apostles (16:15; 16:33; 18:8) speak of the baptism of a whole household or family” (SCDF, Instruction on Infant Baptism, note 2). The Magisterium of the Church has often reminded Christians of their duty to baptize their children in the first weeks after birth (cf. Code of Canon Law, 867, 1), because Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation.

Prayer:     Lord if it be that I have done a good thing I thank Thee for by Thy Grace is has been done.

Saturday

“We need to fundamentally change our prayer life, and not forget that we should extol and offer thanks to our Creator for enabling us to see another day of His kindness. Whenever we go to bed, we should thank God for the passing day, whether good and joyous or difficult and sorrow-filled, for tomorrow the Lord can turn sorrow into joy, if only we would believe in His help and not become despondent. After all, through adversity that cleanses us of sin, the path to spiritual joy in Heavenly Eternity opens to us.”
(Fr. Victor Potapov, ‘Parish Life Journal’ 11/23)

Prayer:   Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us.