Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
The early Church at Corinth suffered from division and disunity. St Paul’s first letter addresses all its many unhealthy expressions. In our passage today, we see Paul attempting to hold the Corinthian Christians accountable for forming cliques around certain leaders rather than following Christ as a unified Body. Paul addresses these believers with a specific analogy, and it applies to us today. It’s this metaphor that I want to zero in on today, and also to remind us that we, like Paul and Apollos, are God’s co-workers. Are we growing and equipping ourselves for this assignment?
Our passage begins, “I could not talk to you as spiritual people, but as fleshly people, as infants in Christ. I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to take it. Indeed, you are still not able, even now, for you are still of the flesh.” Paul likens the Corinthian Christians to infants in Christ. As babes, they followed their flesh with its thoughts, beliefs, and desires. Like infants they were only capable of functioning at a very limited, dependent, and needy level. They had not grown beyond this phase and were not seeking to grow in spiritual maturity. When Paul visited them previously, he had only been able to feed them milk – rudimentary teaching, the very basics, because they couldn’t handle anything more. These Christians were immature in their faith and in the teachings of the Apostles, unable to take in the solid food of more advanced teaching, deeper principles, and harder truth.
So, this begs the question, what about me, what about you? As you take an honest look at your life in Christ, where are you on the developmental scale? Where would you locate yourself in terms of your spiritual maturity? Are you an infant, young child, pre-teen, teen, young adult, maturing adult? Any answer is ok, it’s important to be honest with your self-assessment. It’s important to take our growth in holiness seriously, it’s critical that we seek to grow spiritually, to be a maturing disciple of Jesus Christ. Wherever we find ourselves on this journey of maturation in Christ, perhaps today we can take some time to identify ways that we need to grow and to think about what we can do to help to facilitate this growth. Do we need to better understand the teachings of the Catholic Church? To read and study scripture more? Receive the Sacraments more frequently? Expand or broaden our prayer life? Allow more time for meditation and contemplation? Find ways to serve others with our time, talent, treasure? These are just a few questions among many that we might ask ourselves and then make a plan to seek out the resources or activities we might need to facilitate growth to the next stage of spiritual development. I pray none of us are content to remain an infant in Christ!
At the end of today’s scripture passage, we hear Paul say, “For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” He’s referring to himself and Apollos as God’s co-workers and the Corinthians as God’s field, or God’s building to use a different analogy. They were the field into which the Apostles and ministers planted and watered the seeds of faith. I think the challenge for us today, in addition to considering where we are developmentally in our faith, is to consider whether or not we are merely a passive field into which seeds are scattered and watered occasionally (for example when we go to Mass), or whether we are seeking to grow beyond mere infancy in the faith so that we, too, can be the ministers that God has called us to be. Every baptized Christian is called to be God’s co-worker – to love God and love neighbor, using our gifts, talents, and charisms to spread the Gospel in word and in deed. We can’t do that effectively if we’re content to remain in a spiritual infancy.
Let’s issue a rally cry today to equip ourselves for every good work, as Timothy says in his letter (2 Tim. 3:16,17). The word of God is powerful and effective to give us what we need. More prayerful reading and study of scripture is a great place to start if you’re wondering where to begin. I pray that each of us today will be motivated grow in holiness and will seek out what we need for that God-honoring aim.
I’ll see you in the Eucharist,
Elizabeth Wells