In verse eleven of this particular letter of St. Paul, we read: “It has been reported to me about you, my brothers… that there are rivalries among you.” What exactly were the rivalries about? Human beings by their very nature are usually competitive. However, I think it’s safe to say that the people of Corinth were bragging about something that is surely of little...
Wisdom is an important part of our life of faith. It is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and is connected to prudence, the cardinal virtue of making wise choices. Two lessons about wisdom are present in our Scriptures today.
The first comes from St. Paul who contrasts the wisdom of God – the message of the cross – with the wisdom of the world. In St. Paul’s time, the...
Today, we celebrate the “privileged” memorial of the passion of St. John the Baptist. (A privileged memorial has a “proper” Gospel text.) St. Mark’s account of John’s death calls to mind several stories from the Hebrew Scriptures, such as the conflict between Jezebel and Elijah and the promise made to Esther at a king’s banquet. However, the story of...
Jesus continues his criticism of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel text taken from the 23rd chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. These remarks about the conduct of the Pharisees come at the conclusion of the fifth discourse in this Gospel. In these criticisms, Jesus recalls the dictates of the Law of which the Pharisees claim to be observant. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees is called out...
A chiasm (also called a chiasmus) is a literary device in which a sequence of ideas is presented and then repeated in reverse order. The result is a “mirror” effect as the ideas are “reflected” back in a passage. Each idea is connected to its “reflection” by a repeated word, often in a related form. Some chiasms are quite simple. The common saying...