Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
I’ve often wondered why it is that if God’s claim on us is so real, why this is not more obvious to us. Why is it that God chooses to reveal himself to human beings in such a seemingly awkward way of becoming a human being and then dying on a cross. Is it because of our sin that we don’t see the logic of this more clearly? Or is it because there is something inherently strange about it? Why is it that even during his earthly ministry Jesus seems to have expected that some people would respond positively to his message and others would not grasp who he is or what he is about?
St. Paul addresses some of these concerns in the opening chapters of his first epistle to the Corinthians. In the reading from last week Friday we saw him saying that the gospel appears as “foolishness to the Gentiles” (I Corinthians 1: 23). In other words, in the eyes of the world it is foolishness to think that the cross could be our strength. It’s easy to lose sight of how profoundly strange it is that Christians would take joy in the cross. In a world where success is the mantra, we Christians serve a master who, in the eyes of the world, seems to have failed. Yet the very symbol of our Lord’s torture and hideous death is now strangely our glory, according to Paul. It is through his death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection that Jesus Christ destroyed the power of sin and death.
There is a further positive message in this. Paul tells us that “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong” (I Corinthians 1: 27). We can take comfort in this, because it tells us that God uses us in our weakness. A little later on Paul reminds us that as Christians we are called to rely not on human wisdom but on the power of the Spirit that is in us, and that it is this Spirit that allows us to begin to understand the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2: 14-16). This sounds presumptuous. However, Paul gives us no reason to think that such a change occurs overnight or even fully in one’s lifetime. Later on in the same epistle he writes: “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known” (I Corinthians 13: 12).
- Joel Schickel