Friday

21st Week of Ordinary Time

(I) 1st Reading: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

He Calls for Holiness and Purity
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[1] Finally, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you
learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing,
you do so more and more. [2] For you know what instructions we gave you
through the Lord Jesus. [3] For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that
you abstain from immorality; [4] that each one of you know how to control his
own body in holiness and honor, [5] not in the passion of lust like heathen who
do not know God; [6] that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in this mat-
ters because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly fore-
warned you. [7] For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. [8]
Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his
Holy Spirit to you.

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Commentary:

1. St Paul encourages the Thessalonians "in the Lord Jesus" to follow his advice:
he does not make this plea in his own name or using his personal influence but
in the name of the Lord Jesus. Those who have positions of authority in the
Church should be obeyed, above all, for supernatural reasons (that is what God
desires) and not for any personal qualities they happen to have or simply be-
cause they are "superiors". It is this outlook which causes St Ignatius Loyola to
say that "laying aside all private judgment, we ought to keep our minds prepared
and ready to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, which is our
Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church" ("Spiritual Exercises", 353).

The Thessalonians already knew the commandments, but knowing them is not
enough; they must be put into practice. St John Chrysostom comments: "Good
land does something more than give back the grain put into it; and therefore the
soul should not limit itself to doing what is laid down, but should go further [...].
Two things make for virtue -- avoiding evil and doing good. Fleeing from evil is not
the be-all of virtue; it is the beginning of the path that leads to virtue. One needs,
in addition, to have an ardent desire to be good and to do good" ("Hom. on 1
Thess, ad loc.").

3. What the Apostle says here reflects our Lord's teaching in the Sermon on the
Mount: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your eavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:
48). The call to holiness is a universal one: it is not addressed only to a few, but
to everyone: "Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is hailed
as 'alone holy', loved the Church as his Bride, giving himself up for her so as to
sanctify her (cf. Eph 5:25-26); he joined her to himself as his body and endowed
her with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. Therefore all in the Church,
whether they belong to the hierarchy or are cared for by it, are called to holiness,
according to the Apostle's saying: 'For this is the will of God, your sanctification'
(1 Thess 4:3; cf. Eph 1:4)" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 39).

In the Old Testament holiness is the highest attribute of God. He is holy, and he
asks men to be holy, pointing out that the model and cause of man's holiness is
the holiness of God: "You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev
19:3).

The universal call to holiness was the core of the teaching of the founder of Opus
Dei; it was a message he preached constantly from l928 up to his death in 1975:
"We are deeply moved, and our hearts profoundly shaken, when we listen atten-
tively to that cry of St Paul: 'This is the will of God, your sanctification' [...]. He
calls each and every one to holiness; he asks each and every one to love him --
young and old, single and married, healthy and sick, learned and unlearned, no
matter where they work, or where they are" ("Friends of God", 294).

"Christ's invitation to holiness, which he addresses to all men without exception,
puts each one of us under an obligation to cultivate our interior life and to struggle
daily to practise the Christian virtues; and not just in any old way, nor in a way
which is above average or even excellent. No; we must strive to the point of he-
roism in the strictest and most exacting sense of the word" ("ibid.", 3).

4-8. Man "is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since
God has created it and will raise it up on the last day [...]. His very dignity there-
fore requires that he should glorify God in his body (cf. 1 Cor 6:13-20) and not
allow to serve the evil inclinations of his heart" (Vatican II, ("Gaudium Et Spes",
14).

"Immorality" (v. 3): the word used would be translated as "fornication", were the
style classical Greek; however, by St Paul's time the word had come to refer to
any kind of sexual practice outside marriage or not in accordance with the aims
of marriage. The word translated as "body" literally means "vessel" and it can re-
fer either to one's body or to one's own wife. If "wife" is meant, then the passage
should be taken as an exhortation to married fidelity and to proper use of marri-
age. Whichever meaning is correct, the sacred text is saying that God calls us
to exercise self-control in holiness and honor; that means that one's body and
its functions should be used in the way God means them to be used. The Lord
of life has entrusted to men and women the mission to preserve life and to trans-
mit it in a manner in keeping with human dignity. "Man's sexuality and the facul-
ty of reproduction wondrously surpass the endowments of lower forms of life;
therefore the acts proper to married life are to be ordered according to authentic
human dignity and must be honored with the greatest reverence" ("Gaudium Et
Spes", 51).

"Therefore," St. Escriva comments, "when I remind you now that Christians must
keep perfect chastity, I am referring to everyone -- to the unmarried, who must
practise complete continence; and to those who are married who practise chas-
tity by fulfilling the duties of their state in life. If one has the spirit of God, chastity
is not a troublesome and humiliating burden, but a joyful affirmation. Will-power,
dominion, self-mastery do not come from the flesh or from instinct. They come
from the will, especially if it is united to the Will of God. In order to be chaste (and
not merely continent or decent) we must subject our passions to reason, but for
a noble motive, namely, the promptings of Love" ("Friends of God", 177).

In addition to giving reasons for practising the virtue of chastity, the Apostle warns
that God will punish those who commit sins against this virtue. "These crimes
we are commenting on", says St John Chrysostom, "will in no way be overlooked.
The enjoyment they give us is quite outweighed by the pain and suffering their pu-
nishment earns" ("Hom. on 1 Thess, ad loc.").
　

(II) 1st Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:17-25

An Appeal for Unity (Continuation)
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[17] For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not
with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

The Wisdom of the Cross
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[18] For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God. [19] For it is written, "I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." [20] Where is
the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not
God made foolish the wisdom of the world? [21] For since, in the wisdom of God,
the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of
what we preach to save those who believe. [22] For Jews demand signs and
Greeks seek wisdom, [23] but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to
Jews and folly to Gentiles, [24] but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. [25] For the foolish-
ness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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Commentary:

17. In the first part of this verse St Paul is giving the reasons for his actions as
described in the preceding verses. The second part he uses to broach a new
subject--the huge difference between this world's wisdom and the wisdom of God.

"Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel": this is a reminder
that preaching is St Paul's main task, as it is of the other Apostles (cf. Mk 3:14).
This does not imply a belittling of Baptism: in his mandate to the Apostles to go
out into the whole world (cf. Mt 28:19-20), our Lord charged them to baptize as
well as to preach, and we know that St Paul did administer Baptism. But Bap-
tism--the sacrament of faith presupposes preaching: "faith comes from what is
heard" (Rom 10:17). St Paul concentrates on preaching, leaving it to others to
baptize and gather the fruit--a further sign of his detachment and upright inten-
tion.

In Christian catechesis, evangelization and the sacraments are interdependent.
Preaching can help people to receive the sacraments with better dispositions,
and it can make them more aware of what the sacraments are; and the graces
which the sacraments bring help them to understand the preaching they hear and
to be more docile to it. "Evangelization thus exercises its full capacity when it
achieves the most intimate relationship, or better still a permanent and unbroken
intercommunication, between the Word and the Sacraments. In a certain sense it
is a mistake to make a contrast between evangelization and sacramentalization,
as is sometimes done. It is indeed true that a certain way of administering the
Sacraments, without the solid support of catechesis regarding these same Sacra-
ments and a global catechesis, could end up by depriving them of their effective-
ness to a great extent. The role of evangelization is precisely to educate people
in the faith so as to lead each individual Christian to live the Sacraments as true
Sacraments of faith--and not to receive them passively or apathetically" (Paul VI,
"Evangelii Nuntiandi", 47).

1:18-4:21. St Paul's writings are not an academic study of particular doctrinal
subjects, one after the other, logically arranged. The Apostle's lively mind and the
letter-form he uses create an interweaving of profound theological ideas, practical
applications of teaching and expressions of warm, apostolic affection. In this sec-
tion of the letter St Paul discusses the causes of divisions among the Corinthian
Christians: they have failed to discover where true wisdom lies (1:18-3:3), or what
the true mission of Church ministers is (3:4-4:13). He ends this part of the letter
with some words of warning (4:14-21).

Human wisdom ought to be in line with the wisdom of God. But it has gone off
course and become "wisdom of the world", relying only on miracles or on logic;
only grace can make a person truly wise: therefore, no Christian can boast of
obtaining wisdom by his own efforts (1:18-31). Even St Paul relied only on the
wisdom of the Cross (2:1-5).

Divine wisdom, which men are called to have a share in, is the plan of salvation
revealed by God and taught by the Holy Spirit (2:6-16); the Corinthians have not
yet attained it (3:1-3).

The Corinthians' second shortcoming is that they fail to understand the role of 
Church ministers: these are not working for themselves but for the building-up of
the whole Church; every Christian--and the entire Church--belongs to God and
Christ alone (3:4-23); Christians are not to sit in judgment over God's ministers:
God is their judge (4:1-7). Therefore, the important thing is for Christians to be
faithful and to abound in the grace of God, even if the holders of Church office are
not very impressive (4:8-13).

18-19. The cross of Christ leads the way to true wisdom and prudence. No one
may remain indifferent to it. Some people see the message of the Cross, "the
word of the cross", as folly: these are on the road to perdition. Others--those who
are on the road to salvation--are discovering that the Cross is "the power of God",
because it has conquered the devil and sin. The Church has always seen the
Cross in this light: "This is the wood of the cross, on which hung the Savior of the
world" ("Roman Missal", Good Friday liturgy).

The saints have rejoiced in this truth: "O most precious gift of the Cross! How
splendid it looks! [...] It is a tree which begets life, without causing death; which
sheds light, without casting shadows; which leads to Paradise and does not ex-
pel anyone therefrom; it is the wood which Christ ascended, as a king mounting
his chariot, to defeat the devil who had usurped the power of death, and to set
mankind free from the thrall in which the devil held it. This wood, on which the
Lord, valiant fighter in the combat, was wounded in his divine hands and feet and
side, healed the effects of sins and the wounds which the pernicious dragon had
inflicted on our nature [...]. That supreme wisdom, which, so to speak, burgeoned
on the Cross, exposed the boasts and the foolish arrogance of the wisdom of the
world" (St Theodore the Studite, "Oratio In Adorationem Crucis").

In the Cross the words of Isaiah (29:14) quoted by St Paul are fulfilled. Simplicity
and humility are needed if one is to discover the divine wisdom of the Cross. 'The
message of Christ's cross", St Thomas says, "contains some- thing which to hu-
man wisdom seems impossible--that God should die, or that the Almighty should
give himself up into the power of violent men. It also contains things which seem
to be contrary to worldly prudence--for instance, someone being able to flee from
contradictions and yet not doing so" ("Commentary on 1 Cor, ad loc.").

20-25. After stressing the importance of the message of the Cross, St Paul now
contrasts the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world.

By "wisdom of the world" he means the attitude of man when he is not pursuing
his proper goal: this term "world", which has various meanings in Sacred Scripture
(cf. note on Jn 17:14-16), in St Paul has the pejorative meaning of "all sinful men",
people estranged from God (cf. 1 Cor 1:27; 2:12; 3:19; 5:10; 11:32). This human
wisdom cannot attain knowledge of God (cf. Rom 1:19-25), either because it de-
mands external signs or because it accepts only rational arguments.

For the Jews only signs will do--miracles which prove God's presence (cf. Mt
12:38ff; Lk 11:29); they want to base their faith on things the senses can perceive.
For people with this attitude, the cross of Christ is a scandal, that is, a stumbling
block, which makes it impossible for them to gain access to divine things, because
they have in some way imposed limits as to how God may reveal himself and how
he may not.

The Greeks--St Paul is referring to the Rationalists of his time--think that they are
the arbiters of truth, and that anything which cannot be proved by logical argument
is nonsense. "For the world, that is, for the prudent of the world, their wisdom
turned into blindness; it could not lead them to see God [...]. Therefore, since the
world had become puffed up by the vanity of its dogmas, the Lord set in place the
faith whereby believers would be saved by what seemed unworthy and foolish, so
that, all human conjecture being of no avail, only the grace of God might reveal
what the human mind cannot take in" (St Leo the Great, "Fifth Nativity Sermon").

Christians, whom God has called out from among the Jews and the Gentiles, do
attain the wisdom of God, which consists in faith, "a supernatural virtue. By that
faith, with the inspiration and help of God's grace, we believe that what he has
revealed is true--not because its intrinsic truth is seen by the natural light of rea-
son, but because of the authority of God who reveals it, who can neither deceive
nor be deceived" (Vatican I, "Dei Filius", chap. 3). The same council goes on to
teach that faith is in conformity with reason (cf. Rom 12:1) and that, in addition
to God's help, external signs--miracles and prophecies--and rational argument
do act as supports of faith.

21. "In the wisdom of God ...": this has been interpreted in two ways, which com-
plement one another. Roughly, the first interpretation is this: according to God's
most wise designs, since the world could not attain knowledge of God by its own
efforts, through philosophy, through those elaborate systems of thought the
Greeks were so proud of, God decided to save believers through the preaching of
the Cross, which to human eyes seemed foolishness, a stumbling block (v. 22).

The second interpretation, favored by many Fathers and by St Thomas Aquinas,
contrasts divine wisdom--as manifested in creation and in the Old Testament--
with human wisdom. It runs on these lines: since the world, because of its distor-
ted view of things, failed to attain knowledge of God, despite the way he manifes-
ted himself in creation (cf. Rom 1:19-20) and Sacred Scripture, God has decided
to save man in a remarkable, paradoxical way which better reflects divine wisdom
--the preaching of the Cross.

In both interpretations it is clear that the Apostle is trying to squeeze into one
expression a number of truths--that God's salvific plans are eternal; that human
wisdom, which is capable, on its own, of discovering God through his works, has
become darkened; that the Cross is the climax of the all-wise plans of God; that
man cannot be truly wise unless he accepts "the wisdom of the cross", no matter
how paradoxical it may seem.

25. In his plan of salvation God our Lord wants to use things which to man's mind
seem foolish and weak, so that his wisdom and power will shine out all the more.
"All that Jesus Christ did for us has been meritorious for us; it has all been neces-
sary and advantageous to our salvation; his very weakness has been for us no
less useful than his majesty. For, if by the power of his divinity he has released
us from the captivity of sin, he has also, through the weakness of his flesh, des-
troyed death's rights. As the Apostle so beautifully said, 'the weakness of God is
stronger than men'; indeed, by this folly he has been pleased to save the world
by combating the wisdom of the world and confounding the wise; for, possessing
the nature of God and being equal to God, he abased himself, taking the form of
a servant; being rich, he became poor for love of us: being great, he became little;
being exalted, humble; he became weak, who was powerful; he suffered hunger
and thirst, he wore himself out on the roads and suffered of his own free will and
not by necessity. This type of folly, I repeat: has it not meant for us a way of wis-
dom, a model of justice and an example of holiness, as the same Apostle says:
'The foolishness of God is wiser than men'? So true is this, that death has freed
us from death, life has freed us from error, and grace from sin" (St Bernard, "De
Laudibus Novae Militiae", XI, 27).


Gospel Reading: Matthew 25:1-13

The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens
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(Jesus said to His disciples,) [1] "Then the Kingdom of Heaven shall be compared
to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. [2] Five of
them were foolish, and five were wise. [3] For when the foolish took their lamps,
they took no oil with them; [4] but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. [5]
As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. [6] But at midnight
there was a cry, 'Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' [7] Then all
those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps. [8] And the foolish said to the wise,
'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' [9] But the wise replied,
'Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and
buy for yourselves.' [10] And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and
those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was
shut. [11] Afterwards the other maidens came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to
us.' [12] But he replied, 'Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.' [13] Watch there-
fore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

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Commentary:

1-46. The whole of chapter 25 is a practical application of the teaching contained
in chapter 24. With these parables of the wise and foolish virgins and of the ta-
lents, and His teaching on the Last Judgment, our Lord is again emphasizing the
need for vigilance (cf. note on Matthew 24:42). In this sense, chapter 25 makes
chapter 24 more intelligible.

1-13. The main lesson of this parable has to do with the need to be on the alert:
in practice, this means having the light of faith, which is kept alive with the oil of
charity. Jewish weddings were held in the house of the bride's father. The virgins
are young unmarried girls, bridesmaids who are in the bride's house waiting for
the bridegroom to arrive. The parable centers on the attitude one should adopt
up to the time when the bridegroom comes. In other words, it is not enough to
know that one is "inside" the Kingdom, the Church: one has to be on the watch
and be preparing for Christ's coming by doing good works.

This vigilance should be continuous and unflagging, because the devil is forever
after us, prowling around "like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter
5:8). "Watch with the heart, watch with faith, watch with love, watch with charity,
watch with good works [...]; make ready the lamps, make sure they do not go
out [...], renew them with the inner oil of an upright conscience; then shall the
Bridegroom enfold you in the embrace of His love and bring you into His banquet
room, where your lamp can never be extinguished" (St. Augustine, Sermon", 93).
　

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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase
The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.

[참고: 이 파일은 저서명 "가톨릭 교회의 말씀 전례에 따른 성경공부 해설서"(엮은이: 소순태, 출판사: 가톨릭출판사)의 각주의 연장으로 마련되었습니다].