A Reflection for the Thursday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
“I give thanks to my God always on your account
for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus,
that in him you were enriched in every way,
with all discourse and all knowledge,
as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you,
so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift
as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:4-7)
Most of us have had a friend in a relationship where our first thought is: What does she see in him? We can’t see past the bad haircut or corny sense of humor, but she is absolutely head over heels for this guy.
That’s kind of how I feel reading the introduction of St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He has such confidence in these brothers and sisters of his. “I give thanks to my God always on your account,” he writes. They have been enriched “with all discourse and all knowledge” and “ are not lacking in any spiritual gift.” Aren’t these the same people Paul has learned are constantly fighting to be first, engaging in religious “prostitution,” sacrificing at temples, failing to care for the poor and carrying out all manner of liturgical abuse? After his glowing greeting, chapter after chapter catalogs the flaws of the community.
So you might be tempted to ask, what exactly does he see in them?
Paul sees through eyes of love. Not the type of love that ignores flaws, but one that knows that people are not defined by their flaws any more than your friend’s boyfriend is defined by his haircut.
I think that’s the wrong question. Few of us would want to be judged solely on the “what” of our lives (much less have it written out in excruciatingly honest detail in a letter). It is more important how Paul sees the Corinthians, and that’s what we learn from his introduction. He sees through eyes of love. Not the type of love that ignores flaws, but one that knows that people are not defined by their flaws any more than your friend’s boyfriend is defined by his haircut.
And that how is only possible because of who has enriched and transformed both Paul and his interlocutors—Jesus Christ. It is because of the “grace of God bestowed” by Jesus that Paul is able to deeply love the imperfect people of Corinth, and it is because they have received that same grace that he is so confident about that they will be found “irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is how we are called to see others, to see ourselves, to see our world. It is easy to list the flaws of all these things. And as in the rest of Paul’s letter, sometimes those flaws need to be called out. But his introduction shows us how to see others and ourselves: with confidence that, as Paul says, “God is faithful” and that those he has created are ultimately good and worthy of our love.
