"I could be wrong, but I may be right......"

Hello Friends,

Have you seen the front license plates with a Cardinal on one half and a Wildcat on the other? Superimposed over the two school mascots are the words “A House Divided”. That is part of a Gospel quote that completed says, “A house divided against itself will soon fail!” I hope that college sports are never so important in a family that marriages break up on that account.

In the second reading today St. Paul wrote to the new Christians in Corinth who were divided. The rich ones thought that they didn’t have to share with the poor ones in the community. They also believed that they were “more special” than the other new Christians and wanted the best seats at the celebrations for the Lord’s Supper and first pickings of meals that followed. Those who were sailors and prostitutes thought that they could continue their promiscuous lifestyles, which divided them against those who were trying to remain chaste in their commitments. There must have been divisions over where people were getting their religious education, and which of those teachers were the correct ones to follow. Religious snobbery began early on in our Church’s history evidently. So St. Paul wrote to try to stem them divisions and focus his plebes in Corinth on the redeeming sacrifice and the person of Christ.

We are not much different than the folks in Corinth. We too seem to like to think that our brand of Catholicism is the better one to follow. We want to judge as wrong others who either have different ideas about how to live their Catholicism or those who are of a different Christian religion. We want to be right. We want to consider ourselves best. We want to know that we are number one in God’s eyes.

St. Paul’s admonitions to the Corinthians apply to us very well today. We were not baptized into Dorothy Day or Thomas Merton. Nor was Mother Angelica or Padre Pio crucified for us. We are Christ’s! He suffered for each and all of us. We were all baptized into Him. We receive Him at the altar. Let Him be the center of our life. Let’s devote ourselves to serving, following, and loving Him.

If we can make Christ our focus then we will hopefully be more tolerant of other’s differences from us, and we may even begin some humane dialogue with one another.

paz,
Fr. Chuck