St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians

My Dear Parishioners,

For our second reading we have been hearing from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.

St. Paul’s visit there is recorded in Acts of the Apostles, and he personally helped to establish the Church in the Greek city of Corinth.

The city in which St. Paul evangelized was a “new” city. It had been built by the Romans to replace a city that they had destroyed. As such, it was very much a pagan city with many pagan temples and pagan cults. Yet, it also had a Jewish synagogue.

St. Paul had great success in Corinth and brought a mix of Jewish and pagan converts into the Faith.

He wrote the letter to address divisions within the community and immoral practices that had crept into the community. While doing so, St. Paul also expounded on several important theological topics. One of those is the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead and our share in His Resurrection which he takes up in chapter 15.

The fact that he took up the topic of the Resurrection means that there were some in the community who were questioning Jesus’s Resurrection and our own bodily Resurrection.

Those doubting the Resurrection could have been Jewish converts from the Sadducees. The Sadducees doubted the existence of an afterlife.

Those doubting the Resurrection could also have been converts from paganism. Pagan philosophers taught that the body was a prison for the soul, and so death was a freeing of the soul from the body. Thus, for a pagan, the idea of a bodily Resurrection would only mean that their souls would be in a bodily prison forever.

This past weekend St. Paul affirmed the fact of Jesus’s Resurrection against the doubters: For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, Christ appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born abnormally he appeared to me.

This weekend St. Paul continues his affirmation of the Doctrine of the Resurrection and that those who doubt the Resurrection are depriving themselves of a share in Jesus’s Victory: Brothers and sisters: If Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.

Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

We are created with body and soul. Death for us is the separation of our souls from our bodies. Our souls go to be with God (God willing) while our bodies go to decay. Our souls then become “disembodied” souls. It is a Doctrine of the Faith that at the General Judgment we will receive a new body, a Glorified Body, so that we can then again be both body and soul.

St. Augustine helps to explain just how wonderful our Resurrected bodies will be: The bodies of the saints, then, shall rise again free from every defect, from every blemish, as from all corruption, weight, and impediment. For their ease of movement shall be as complete as their happiness. Whence their bodies have been called spiritual, though undoubtedly they shall be bodies and not spirits. For just as now the body is called animate, though it is a body, and not a soul [anima], so then the body shall be called spiritual, though it shall be a body, not a spirit (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love).

We are so blessed to have such a loving and merciful Savior. Jesus wills that we will share in His Glory. As He has a Glorified Body, so He also wills us to enjoy the fullness of the Resurrection by also having a Glorified Body. I can’t wait to see what mine is like.

Let us continue to lay siege to Heaven for our families, our parish family, our first responders, for vocations to the priesthood, for the sick, for the dead.

St. Joseph, our Patron, pray for us!

Fr. Michael J Pawelko, Pastor