Sunday

1 Corinthians with commentary from the Navarre Bible Commentary this week…

(Paul writes…)“Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel”: this is a reminder that preaching is St Paul’s main task, as it is of the other Apostles (cf. Mk 3: 14). This does not imply a belittling of Baptism: in his mandate to the Apostles to go out into the whole world (cf. Mt 28:19-20), our Lord charged them to baptize as well as to preach, and we know that St Paul did administer Baptism. But Baptism—the sacrament of faith—presupposes preaching: “faith comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). St Paul concentrates on preaching, leaving it to others to baptize and gather the fruit—a further sign of his detachment and upright intention.

In Christian catechesis, evangelization and the sacraments are interdependent. Preaching can help people to receive the sacraments with better dispositions, and it can make them more aware of what the sacraments are; and the graces which the sacraments bring help them to understand the preaching they hear and to be more docile to it.

Prayer:   For as many have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ…Alleluia

Monday
1 Corinthians 1:18 – 25

For the [ ]message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the [ disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a [ ]stumbling block and to the ]Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Prayer:  Our Father, Who art in  Heaven, hallowed by Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

 

Tuesday
Commentary on 1 Cor. 1 18-

Human wisdom ought to be in line with the wisdom of God. But it has gone off course and become “wisdom of the world”, relying only on miracles or on logic; only grace can make a person truly wise: therefore, no Christian can boast of obtaining wisdom by his own efforts (1:18-31). Even St Paul relied only on the wisdom of the Cross (2:1-5).

Divine wisdom, which men are called to have a share in, is the plan of salvation revealed by God and taught by the Holy Spirit (2:6-16); the Corinthians have not yet attained it (3:1-3).

The cross of Christ leads the way to true wisdom and prudence. No one may remain indifferent to it. Some people see the message of the Cross, “the word of the cross”, as folly: these are on the road to perdition. Others— those who are on the road to salvation—are discovering that the Cross is “the power of God”, because it has conquered the devil and sin. The Church has always seen the Cross in this light: “This is the wood of the cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world” (Roman Missal, Good Friday liturgy).

Prayer:  O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of good things and Giver of life: Come and dwell in us, and cleanse us of all impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.

 

Wednesday
Commentary on 1 Cor. 1 20-

For the Jews only signs will do—miracles which prove God’s presence (cf. Mt 12:38ff; Lk 11:29); they want to base their faith on things the senses can perceive. For people with this attitude, the cross of Christ is a scandal, that is, a stumbling block, which makes it impossible for them to gain access to divine things, because they have in some way imposed limits as to how God may reveal himself and how he may not.

The Greeks—St Paul is referring to the Rationalists of his time—think that they are the arbiters of truth, and that anything which cannot be proved by logical argument is nonsense. “For the world, that is, for the prudent of the world, their wisdom turned into blindness; it could not lead them to see God […]. Therefore, since the world had become puffed up by the vanity of its dogmas, the Lord set in place the faith whereby believers would be saved by what seemed unworthy and foolish, so that, all human conjecture being of no avail, only the grace of God might reveal what the human mind cannot take in” (St Leo the Great, Fifth Nativity Sermon).

Christians, whom God has called out from among the Jews and the Gentiles, do attain the wisdom of God, which consists in faith, “a supernatural virtue. By that faith, with the inspiration and help of God’s grace, we believe that what he has revealed is true—not because its intrinsic truth is seen by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God who reveals it, who can neither deceive nor be deceived” (Vatican I, Dei Filius, chap. 3). The same council goes on to teach that faith is in conformity with reason (cf. Rom 12:1) and that, in addition to God’s help, external signs—miracles and prophecies—and rational argument do act as supports of faith.

 

Prayer:   Create in me a clean heart of God and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not from thy presence nor take thy Holy Spirit from me.    Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and by thy governing spirit establish me.
Thursday

1 Corinthians 26-31

26 For []you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many []noble, are called. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the  ]base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence. 30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— 31 that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”
Prayer:  Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears! Turn, then, O most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
*Salve Regina

Friday
Commentary on 1 Cor. 1  25-

As in the case of the Apostles—”You did not choose me, but I chose you” (Jn 15:16)—it is the Lord who chooses, who gives each Christian his vocation. St Paul emphasizes that the initiative lies with God by saying three times that it was God who chose those Corinthians to be Christians, and he did not base his choice on human criteria. Human wisdom, power, nobility, these were not what brought them to the faith—nor the inspirations which God later gives. “God is no respecter of persons (cf. 2 Chron 19:7; Rom 2:1; Eph 6:9; Col 3:25; etc.)”, Monsignor Escrivá reminds us. “When he invites a soul to live a life fully in accordance with the faith, he does not set store by merits of fortune, nobility, blood or learning. God’s call precedes all merits [. . .]. Vocation comes first. God loves us before we even know how to go toward him, and he places in us the love with which we can respond to his call” (Christ is passing by, 33).

Thus, God chooses whomever he wants to, and these first Christians— uneducated, unimportant, even despised people, in the world’s eyes—will be what he uses to spread his Church and convert the wise, the strong and the “important”: this disproportion between resources and results will make it quite clear that God is responsible for the increase.

Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death.

 

Saturday
Commentary on 1 Cor. 1 – St Paul’s words remind us that supernatural resources are the thing an apostle must rely on. It is true that human resources are necessary, and God counts on them (cf. 1 Cor 3:5-10); but the task God has commended to Christians exceeds their abilities and can be carried out only with his help.  …

God’s call makes a person a member of Christ Jesus, through Baptism; and if a Christian is docile to grace he or she will gradually become so like Christ as to be able to say with St Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). This “being in Christ Jesus” enables a person to share in the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption which Jesus is for the Christian.

Jesus Christ indeed is the “wisdom” of God (cf. Col 1:15f; Heb 1:20, and knowing him is true wisdom, the highest form of wisdom. He is for us our “righteousness”, because through the merits obtained by his incarnation, death and resurrection he has made us truly righteous (= just, holy) in God’s sight. He is also the source of all holiness, which consists in fact in identification with Christ. Through him, who has become “redemption” for us, we have been redeemed from the slavery of sin. “How well the Apostle orders his ideas: God has made us wise by rescuing us from error; and then he has made us just and holy by giving us his spirit” (Chrysostom, Hom. on 1 Cor, 5, ad loc.).

In view of the complete gratuitousness of God’s choice (vv. 25-28) and the immense benefits it brings with it, the conclusion is obvious: “Deo omnis gloria. All glory to God.’ It is an emphatic conclusion of our nothingness. He, Jesus, is everything. We, without him, are worth nothing: nothing. Our vainglory would be just that: vain glory; it would be sacrilegious robbery. There should be no room for that ‘I’ anywhere” (J. Escrivá, The Way, 780).

Prayer:  Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.  As it was in the beginning it is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.