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Last year, when we were working mostly on the Epistle readings for Sunday Masses in the Usus Antiquior, the Gregorian Rite, the Pian Rite, the Tridentine Rite, the Traditional Latin Mass – the Vetus Ordo, the 10th Sunday after Pentecost was supplanted by the Feast of the Transfiguration. Therefore, let’s circle back and fill in the gap in last year’s progression through these summer green Sundays. Let’s also start with the reading from 1 Cor 12:2-11in the RSV:
Brethren: concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols, however you may have been moved. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
The passage is solidly Trinitarian, for all three Persons are differentiated. In v. 3 we have the Spirit (Holy Spirit) of God (the Father) informing how one can call Jesus (the Son), “Lord”. The next Trinitarian explication is in v. 4.
Paul first reminds the Corinthians about idolatry. Idolatry is contrary to the “Spirit of God”. It is a way of saying “Anathema… Accursed”… to Jesus (v. 2-3). What comes to mind in modern times would be invoking Pachamama or the Grandmother of the West in order to enter the “circle of spirits”. It is interesting that this verse about idolatry is never read in the Lectionary of the Novus Ordo. The parallel pericope begins with verse 4, beginning with the description of charismatic gifts from the Holy Spirit. Paul then explains the polyvalent action of the Holy Spirit in the Church, Christ’s mystical Body.
With verse 4 the Apostle to the Gentiles (now ex-Gentiles as above “when you were heathen”, Greek éthnos), likens the harmony life of the actions of the Spirit in the Church to how the differences of the members of the body work together. The chapter after this reading continues with the same imagery of the human body (vv. 12-27). Hence, with the Body of the Church, the Holy Spirit gives distinct graces which contribute to the common good. There are, as the RSV thrice puts it, “varieties” (diairésis each time) of gifts (charismata). Other versions will say “differences”, “divisions”, “distributions”. That diairésis, as the Pauline scholar Fernand Prat explains,
signifies “division” rather than ” difference,” but the difference results from the division. The difference refers to the various charismata, the divers ministries and the different operations, but does not imply the diversity of operations, ministries and charismata compared with One another. Thus the Greek commentators regard these three words as synonyms or, more exactly, as applying to the same objects.
Remembering that the three Persons of the Trinity work always in unity, the gifts or ministries attributed to the Father are workings or operations or power (energêma), graces of healing and miracles. Those from the Son are services or administrations (diaklonía), spiritual gifts for the active service of the Church’s members. The varieties associated more with the Holy Spirit would then be gifts (charisma), such as prophecy and tongues and interpretation. However we differentiate them, Paul makes clear that all these graces are gifts, charismata, which embrace the other graces and that Holy Spirit gives them now to one and now to another for the good of the whole.
When we have a pericope at Mass, a cutting of Scripture for sacred worship, we have to spill out over the edges of that pericope to glean the context and to see where it is going. This means spending time before Sunday, identifying the antiphons and readings to come and then opening those Bibles and looking into them. In this way, when you are at Sunday Mass, and the reading is spoken or sung, you can most beneficially gain what Holy Church wanted you to have through your full, conscious and active receptivity, which is the highest form of participation.
For example, chapter 12 ends with the admonishment to “earnestly desire the higher gifts (charismata tà kreíttona)”. What follows in 1 Corinthians 13 is perhaps the most famous of all the Pauline writings:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Now you can see better the context leading up to this most eloquent of Paul’s inspired words, wherein he seems to demonstrate that he has received special gifts. Again, in ch. 13, he differentiates the varieties. Again, he uses the analogy of the human body, this time not in the division of its members in harmony, but rather with the natural growth that takes place in maturation. In ch. 12 Paul contrasted who the Corinthians once were as heathens, Gentiles, mired in idolatry. Through what the Spirit has given them, they are like new creations, new persons, in harmony with themselves and each other, benefiting now from this gift and now from that, all with the view of growth in the higher gift of agape, Latin caritas, sacrificial love.
Finally, a glance at the Sunday Collect foreshadows this complex of pericope and context with its body imagery and varieties of gifts for making progress, maturation.
Deus, qui omnipotentiam tuam parcendo maxime et miserando manifestas: multiplica super nos misericordiam tuam; ut, ad tua promissa currentes, caelestium bonorum facias esse consortes.
Literally…
O God, who manifest Your omnipotence especially by sparing and being merciful, increase Your mercy upon us, so that You may make us, rushing to the things You have promised, to be partakers of heavenly benefits.
God multiplies upon us many gifts, especially His mercy which is a demonstration of how He is almighty: he can close an infinite rift that we caused through sins. If in Paul we are maturing, making forward progress in growth through His gifts, in the Collect we, His consortes, those who share His destiny (sors) are rushing (currentes from curro, “to run”) towards what He has promised, the joys of Heaven.