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Now that Ordinary Time has begun, we’ll be spending from now until Lent begins in the first four chapters of Saint Paul’s First Letter for the Corinthians. To allow the Holy Spirit to speak more clearly to us through these readings, let’s get some context of this letter. Imagine a Church divided, filled with careless liturgy, struggling to find its way in a culture hostile to it, a culture of division and lawsuits that misunderstands of marriage and sexuality. Imagine a Church unsure of how it should interact with the wider culture. Is this the Catholic Church of today or the Catholic Church in Corinth in the 50’s A.D.? It could describe both equally well.
When Saint Paul first arrived in Corinth, in southern Greece, around 51 A.D., it was a big metropolitan center of economy and pagan culture (think New York City or Los Angeles). He stayed just long enough to get the Church up and running. After almost five years problems kept creeping up, and the Corinthian Christians wrote to Saint Paul to answer some tough questions for them. They were dealing with divisions, sexual misconduct, multiplying lawsuits in the Church, and outspoken denials of Jesus’ Resurrection. Liturgically, they were faced with careless liturgy and disruptive use of charismatic gifts during Mass. And they were struggling to find a correctly Christian view of marriage, celibacy, food offered to idols. Saint Paul planned to go to Corinth in person (see 1 Cor 11:34), but he wrote this letter from Ephesus around 56 A.D., during his third missionary journey, to start addressing these issues.
Our second reading today is just the first three verses of this letter, but reading it in this context is illuminating. This community, vexed with so many deep questions about what it means to be a Christian in the real world, Saint Paul calls “sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be holy.” To be sanctified, to be holy, means to be set apart for God’s purposes. Holy water is plain old tap water that is set apart by the Church’s blessing to be used in Baptism. Holy oil is plain old oil that is set apart by the Church’s blessing for the celebration of the Sacraments. To be a sanctified person who is called to be holy is to allow God to set you apart for his purposes.
One thing that is blatantly obvious from the context of this reading is that you do not have to have the faith fully figured out to be a sanctified person who is called to be holy. You can struggle with how best to practice faith and talk about faith and still be a sanctified person who is called to be holy. The point is to be engaged in the struggle of figuring it out, to allow God to keep showing you more and more what it means to be set apart for his purposes.
