Word to the Wise
Monday, September 10, 2012 - Monday in the 23th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Cor 5:1-8 and Luke 6:6-11]Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough? Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough, inasmuch as you are unleavened. For our Pascal Lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The Corinthian Christian community obviously had some interesting problems. The words quoted from St. Paul today come after he has blistered them for permitting incest! Not even the Romans tolerated marriage between stepmother and stepson! In Judaism, Leviticus 18:8 prohibited incest. This seemed a universal "taboo." (Although recent efforts to redefine marriage legally may put us on a level with those Corinthians!) However, the Corinthians believed that their new "freedom" in Christ meant they were also free from certain moral constraints! St. Paul makes it clear that such a belief is contrary to the gospel! He uses the image of yeast in dough to illustrate his point.
The immoral conduct of the one person can influence the entire community! It is not just the particular immoral act, but the attitude as well. If someone believes they can "get away with" certain immoral conduct by cloaking it in religious liberty, the whole Christian faith can be endangered! It's not just the act itself but the belief that the act is justifiable which is of concern! St. Paul urges the equivalent of "excommunication" as a penalty for the man involved (presumably the woman is not Christian). In short, he wants the entire community to purge immoral influence in favor of the "unleavened bread of sincerity and truth," which is faith in Christ. A whole different way of looking at life should come about as a result of their conversion, but this new way does not do away with moral law. Rather it gives that law a new motivation. Those Corinthians may be the occasion of some hard challenges for our own day! AMEN