(Same Day) September 14, 2016 Wednesday
Twenty-Fourth Week of Year II
The Responsorial (Psalm 33) identifies authentic joy: “Happy the people the Lord has chosen to be
his own.”
1Corinthians
12:31 to 13:13
is known as Paul’s “hymn to love.”
But it is more precisely a hymn to maturity. Paul is talking about the passage
from “childish ways” to maturity, from what is imperfect to perfect, partial to
full.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child…when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
Paul begins by saying that those who want spiritual gifts just to
feel good about themselves and to look better than others are not “spiritual
people, but rather… infants in Christ.” He ends with the call to grow up: “Do
not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking
be adults.”
The sign of maturity is dedication to “building up the Church.”
Adult Christians, like good stewards, take responsibility for using God’s gifts
for roles of service, to build up the body of Christ, till we
become one in faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, and form that perfect
man who is Christ come to full stature.
Let us, then, be children no longer … Rather, let us profess the
truth in love and grow to the full maturity of Christ the head. Through him the
whole body grows, and builds itself up in love.[1]
None of us has anything to boast about. We are just stewards of
gifts from God who is “the source of our life in Christ Jesus.” Our faith is a
sharing in God’s own knowing act, but it is imperfect.
For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we will see face
to face. My knowledge is imperfect now; then I shall know fully, even as I am
known.
Our hope can be called a sharing in God’s will to do what he
promises. His intentions become ours: our goal and our strength. But our hopes
fall far short of the reality: “no eye has seen… nor human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him.” So like “good stewards of the
manifold grace of God” we invest and try to grow in what is greater and more
lasting, knowing that “when the perfect comes, the imperfect will come to an
end.”
There are
in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of
these is love. Seek eagerly after love.[2]
Building up the Church can be painful. In Luke 7:31-35 Jesus
points out that anyone whose fundamental desire is not for what he offers will
always find a reason to reject him and his messengers:
John the Baptizer came eating no bread and drinking no wine, and
you say, “He has a demon.” The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you
say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard….!”
Paul’s answer to this was:
"Think of us… as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s
mysteries. ….It is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But
with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human
court.... It is the Lord who judges me."
As stewards of Christ the King, we are ultimately accountable only
to him. Like Paul, we try to “become all things to all people,” to win them to
Christ, But our focus is on fidelity, not on popularity, admiration or visible
results. We know the source of our joy: “Happy
the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.” [3]
Initiative: Be
a steward of the greater gifts. Serve with faith, hope and love.
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