TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - JUNE 9, 2024

TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth because of the issues and divisions that were arising within the community. To know that even the Church so early on experienced disagreement and division is comforting for the modern Church when we might despair at how divided things are now. Paul wrote with both a challenge to them to strive for unity and encouragement in the hardship that comes with shedding sin; this is applicable to both the Church community and to our own selves as individuals. Paul describes the body as a Temple for the spirit of God. Our bodies and our souls are unified in a way that makes us a person. When division arises within the Temple of our body, it becomes our duty to repair that division.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

In this Sunday’s first reading, we read of the consequence of the Fall of Man in the garden of Eden - death has entered into humanity. Even with this punishment, God lovingly offers a promise of hope and redemption through the words of the Protoevangelium, the earliest promise of Christ: “I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” The experience of the death of the earthly body is natural to other animals; in the case of humans, though, death is a punishment. However, God never punishes arbitrarily. Instead, he takes the mistakes we have made, even the first and greatest one, and transforms them into something that leads us closer to Him. Every person who has lived a normal life knows that God both gives and takes away; but this also means we have the opportunity to receive what He gives and to give up what He asks of us. In the human experience, it is necessary that one must give up something in order to gain a greater good because this is the essence of love. Adam gave up a rib so that he might gain a wife. A farmer must give up a seed to harvest a plant. We must give up a life of selfishness in order to serve others. We give up our own youthfulness and energy so that we might gain new life through our children. Christ gave up his entire life so that we may live. Christ spent his entire public ministry preparing both his followers and his detractors to understand the meaning of his sacrifice; death is a punishment of sin and still Christ has taken it on for our sake. This does not take away the experience of death from us, but it does mean that our deaths can be transformed into acts of love for others. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

This Sunday’s Gospel is full of multiple profound encounters that Christ had which enabled him to pass on teachings regarding openness to sin, sin against the Holy Spirit, and the opportunity for us to become children of God through him. He also speaks about the division from within; we can easily see division within an institution or a community, but this house of God, our own selves, is susceptible to division, as well. If we maintain our bodies but neglect our spirits, we cannot stand. If we maintain our spirits but neglect our bodies, we cannot stand. The punishment of death has brought suffering into our lives, but we know that suffering can be sanctified. The key is patience - we are planting and waiting for things to bloom. Sin is rooted in a desire for immediate satisfaction, as was the case with Adam and Eve and as is the case wherever there is division. Patience is our way of overcoming sin. Be patient that God will soon heal a divided world and our divided selves; He has promised us from the beginning that it will be so.