Now instead of the spirit of the world, we have received the Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us.
1 Corinthians 12
From these words of the 1st reading we witness Paul's use of his opponents own notions and terminology against them. Some of the Corinth Christians felt they possessed a wisdom that put them above others whom they looked down upon as children.
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Paul's words reflect his view that those who thought themselves better than others were "soul people," a group that placed greater stress upon the body and its needs. These people contrasted in Paul's mind with those called "spiritual people" who maintained Jesus was "the Lord of Glory." These were the people that Paul considered to be perfect.
What is there in this part of St. Paul's letter for us today? The Catholic population in our Church today has dramatically changed in the last 50 years. Only after the end of the second World War, only then were pastors and high school teachers beating the drums for Catholics to move on to college -- primarily to produce a Church body of educated Catholics. By the turn of the century so many Catholics had achieved a goal that produced a every-growing, ever-graduating group of thinkers. It wasn't long before the same pastors, bishops and popes realized they now had a tiger by the tail. An educated person asks questions, like an Augustine, a Thomas Aquinas. An educated person doesn't easily march in lock-step at another's commands without first carefully studying them. Consequently, birth control, then abortion, followed by society's gradual awareness of a gay American population in the Catholic community, and this followed by an ever increasing number of couples living together before marriage became issues not easily accepted nor swallowed.
The educational pushers now encountered a tide of people who found issues of faith and morals to be challenges by newly-opened minds.
What Paul is teaching pertains to the current status in our Church: issues of faith and morals are being challenged, indeed rejected by some Catholics. And so, we have to ask "How do we confront these challenges today?" This is the new challenge in every Bishop's life because the Bishop, in union with the Vicar of Christ, is the official teacher of faith and morals and doctrine.
So, striving to be faithful Catholics we might consider how is a Bishop, an Ordinary, along with his faithful flock, how are they to revive not so much a blind faith but the growth of an informed spirituality and the willingness to accept what Jesus has taught and what our Church puts before us as the basic tenets of our Church? How do we see more clearly the Word of God in Jesus' teaching and the authority entrusted to Peter and his successors?
Our serious consideration might be this: are we, the followers of Jesus in the Catholic Church, willing to sacrifice an aspect of a treasured American freedom to live a life in conformity with the Gospels, the Commandments, and the teachings of our Church? A married couple sacrifice much to be faithful. A consecrated religious offers up a very personal part of his/her life to be a faithful follower of the charism of their religious group. A faithful priest sacrifices family life to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, the great High Priest. For without doubt, living the will of God for us demands a genuine martyrdom in contemporary culture.
... let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom....
Psalm 145:12-13ab
