Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Lesson: 1 Sm 3:3b-10, 19
Epistle: 1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20
Gospel: Jn 1:35-42
“Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew” by Pietro da Cortona (c. 1626-1630)
Two unfortunate features of the Roman Lectionary in use since 1970 are the “Pauline sandwich” and the phenomenon of scriptural cut-and-paste. The readings for today’s Mass give a prime example of both.
First, the “Pauline sandwich” is that arrangement whereby the First Reading (generally from the Old Testament) and the Gospel have some obvious theme which ties them together, while the Second Reading (generally an epistle of St. Paul) sits between the two with little to no obvious tie to either. This leads to the Second Reading being almost universally ignored in parish homiletics, which makes for a sad impoverishment in Catholic preaching, as Catholics attending the Novus Ordo rarely if ever hear the words of Saint Paul preached upon.
Second, the compilers of the Lectionary had an almost immoderate zeal for excising and joining together parts of Scripture to be proclaimed to the people, rather than simply allow complete pericopies to speak for themselves. Aside from the blasphemous implications of this tendency (did the liturgical reformers not believe the words of Saint Paul that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness”?), it contributes to a scriptural impoverishment of the people of God and forecloses on the possibility of, perhaps, of recognizing better the unity of the Word of God throughout all three readings.
Consider the full, unexcised version of the epistle from today’s Mass:
“Everything is lawful for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is lawful for me,” but I will not let myself be dominated by anything. “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food,” but God will do away with both the one and the other. The body, however, is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take Christ’s members and make them the members of a prostitute? Of course not! Or do you not know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For “the two,” it says, “will become one flesh.” But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.
At first glance, it might not be obvious how this passage from Saint Paul relates to the First Reading, which recounts the call of the Prophet Samuel, and the Gospel, which speaks of the call of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew. But when we consider the full passage, and reflect upon the state of the church in Corinth, we may find that Saint Paul’s words speak powerfully to our own feeble efforts to follow the call of Jesus.
Paul’s warning against prostitution to the church in Corinth (obscured by the elimination of select verses from the version heard at Mass) is no hyperbole. Corinth, in that day, was one of the most important port cities in Europe, and like port cities throughout the centuries, was a seething fleshpot of vice and corruption. The early Christian community in this environment had to wrestle with and overcome the spiritually toxic atmosphere of their city, and it wasn’t easy! When Paul enjoins them against giving themselves over the prostitution, he was addressing a real issue that is impairing the full, authentic living out of the Christian vocations to which the Corinthians have been called.
More than this, however, he was addressing a sin of greater gravity: that of spiritual presumption. It was not simply that some of the Corinthians were falling again and again into habitual sin; it was that they were making cover of their sin by claiming a false mantle of Christian freedom. Having answered the call of the Gospel and been freed from the yoke of Levitic observance, some of these new Christians claimed “the freedom of the children of God” in order to minimize the gravity of their continued sexual immorality. Presuming that their place in heaven was secure by virtue of their baptism, they saw no need to purge themselves of sin and glorify God in their bodies.
It might be tempting to shake our heads at this and think, “How ridiculous!” But if we were to truly examine our own consciences, might we as well find instances in our lives where we have fallen into the same presumption? At some point in our lives, we heard God calling to us, whether it was through a mysterious whisper into our soul, as with Samuel, or through the Christian witness of someone in our lives, such as when Andrew declared to Peter, "We have found the Messiah." However, as time goes on and we become comfortable in our identity as Christians, it is easy to begin to take this call for granted. From a radical, spiritually healthy trust in the mercy of God, we can slide by degrees into an attitude that says, “I’m basically a good Christian,” “My sins aren’t that serious,” “In the end, God knows that I am sorry and will forgive me”.
We ought not to fall into undue scrupulosity over our sins, but neither should we downplay them, nor should we presume to think we understand the path and contours of God’s plan for our life. Consider this passage from Jeremiah 7:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Reform your ways and your deeds so that I may dwell with you in this place. Do not put your trust in these deceptive words: “The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!” ….Go to my place at Shiloh, where I made my name dwell in the beginning. See what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. And now, because you have committed all these deeds—oracle of the LORD—because you did not listen, though I spoke to you untiringly, and because you did not answer, though I called you, I will do to this house, which bears my name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave you and your ancestors, exactly what I did to Shiloh.
The people at the time of Jeremiah considered that nothing really bad could happen to Jerusalem, because it housed the temple of the Lord, and how could God receive the honor that was due to Him without His Temple? They presumed that their sins could never be so bad as to lead God to abandon His dwelling place and His people, so they continued to revel in idolatries and oppression. In their own lifetimes, they were to discover how badly they misunderstood God’s plan, when the Temple was destroyed and the people of Jerusalem carried off into captivity in Babylon. God did not abandon His people, true, but His shepherding of them took them in a direction that they would lament for decades.
Whatever our besetting sin may be, whatever fault or failing we may seek to minimize or to downplay with, “It’s fine,” let us never fall into the trap of succumbing to the presumption to excuse ourselves. Rather, let us call to mind, in those moments of temptation, the moment when we received the call of God. Let us remember that Jesus has called us by name precisely to free us from those sins against which we feel that there can be no hope of struggle. Mindful of this incalculable grace of our conversion, let us glorify God in our bodies and in our all and let our whole being be a temple of the Holy Spirit.